"Since Syrians took to the streets more than 11 years ago demanding freedom from decades of dictatorship, the Syrian regime has used violence and disinformation as tools to silence those who dare to oppose it, especially those brave enough to expose the war crimes being committed. Civilians, doctors, humanitarians and human rights defenders have all faced real-life consequences of online harms. Their experiences are testament to the deadly cost of disinformation. Although there is a trove of evidence of torture, chemical weapons use, and the indiscriminate and targeted bombing of civilians, a relatively small number of conspiracy theorists – sometimes aided by a Russian-backed disinformation campaign, other times inspired by Russia’s disinformation talking points – have managed to distort the facts, endanger people’s lives, and cast long shadows of doubt over policy debates on Syria; in some cases stalling political action by the international community when it was sorely needed. New data gathered and analysed by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) for this report shows that disinformation about the conflict in Syria has created a dangerous ecosystem that permeates beyond the online bubble of social media and impacts both lives and government policies in the real world. The disinformation campaign has been devastating for those who are brave enough to risk everything to document human rights violations, as well as for survivors of chemical attacks. The unprecedented use of social media in the Syria conflict shed new light on the evolution of information warfare. Indeed, the war in Syria was the first major conflict to be played out online, creating what researchers have dubbed "a dangerous illusion of unmediated information flows." (Page 2)