BOOK REVIEW | Asad in Search of Legitimacy: Message and Rhetoric in the Syrian Press under Hafiz and Bashar

Kedar’s book seeks to address the relative gap in research on the Syrian media. The format and style of the book is rather standard throughout, offering readers thematically organized chapters that each try and discern and analyze messages, headlines, stories and strategies of the Syrian press. The period focus of the book is on Hafiz al-Asad’s rule, although a lengthy concluding chapter is devoted to the first year and a half of Bashar al-Asad’s presidency. An interesting format used by Kedar is to provide the media content in Arabic followed by English translation. The format is beneficial for readers who wish to juxtapose the original content with the author’s analysis. Kedar’s focus is on news stories written in the three main Syrian newspapers: Tishrin, Al-Ba‘ath and Al-Thawra. Despite proclamations of objectivity (pg. xv), he relies on rather crude generalizations and culturalist arguments about Syrians and Arabs in general that saturate the analysis and deflect from the analytical contribution of the book in explaining the dynamics of the Syrian print media. The first chapter discusses ways in which the media serve the goals of propagating regime ideology and legitimating the rule of Hafiz al-Asad to the Syrian public. While he is successful in distinguishing between propaganda and information and in drawing parallels between media content and the political imperatives of the regime, Kedar’s methodology of content analysis ignores the relationship between media and other institutions that served similar socializing functions within Syrian society. He fails to see the media as an appendage of Syria’s authoritarian political structure, suggesting instead that it is “recruited” (pg. 10) to serve the goals of the regime. The second chapter departs from a focus on Hafiz al-Asad towards analyzing messages about the Syrian state. In this, the lengthiest chapter, he identifies and organizes themes found in the Syrian press, including themes of unity, “Arabness,” and modernism. He also demonstrates consistent patterns in how other national issues such as citizenship, the army and the Ba‘ath Party are treated in the media.