3,003 displaced Syrian families in Lebanon, Alrababa’h et al. (2020) weigh the influence of “pull” factors, which draw individuals back to their former homes, and “push” factors which encourage them to leave their host communities. In doing so they find that conditions in a refugee’s home country and access to information about those conditions are a primary driver in decision making (Alrababa’h et al. (2020)). Indeed, economic factors may be even more vital to return choices than sentiment towards or connection with their home country (Camarena and Hägerdal (2020)). Refugees with strong ties to their home country may still choose to return as regular visitors rather than permanently if their new residence offers more attractive economic opportunities. Additionally, refugees are less likely to return to areas with ethic mixing when ethic tensions were a factor in initial violence and displacement (Camarena and Hägerdal (2020)).

Refugees have complex relationships with their host communities as well as with their home locations. Displacement can be part of a strategy of war, with militants manipulating refugee and IDP movement to gain access to resources or ethnically cleanse certain areas (Lischer (2008)). As part of these strategies refugees may be militarized, spreading conflict to their new locations (Lischer (2008)). More positively, in areas with low public service provision the introduction of refugees to a community may bring goods and services which benefit all the residents (Zhou et al. (2021)). Such community benefits mitigate negative sentiment towards refugee settlements.

Identifying effective ways to measure return practices is not straightforward as there are no systematic data sources on refugee return, and many current reports rely on surveys to test the underlying assumptions governing return decisions (Ghosn et al. (2021)). Given the importance of information for decisions around return (Alrababa’h et al. (2020)) and gauging living conditions in the home country, leveraging social media sources is of critical relevance because they offer an immediate assessment of returnee preferences and thoughts on return as well as a way to measure how refugees access and consume information that would be pertinent to their return.

**Relevance to the call:** Our paper contributes to work on refugee resettlement and attitudes from other researchers in this call including Bove et al. (2021), Kaplan (2021), and Parry and Aymerich (2021). Bove et al. (2021) notes that refugees are more likely to return to areas with UN peacekeeping missions, as they provide a sense of stability and help with service provision. Local governments and militias in Syria may provide similar services in certain regions (Bove et al. (2021)). Additionally, local peacekeeping agreements, if crafted with the aide of those from all sides, may facilitate safer and lasting return. Such agreements may even work in cases of high tension, such as perceived ISIL affiliation of IDPs, if the IDPs are part of the discussion or trusted leaders work as negotiators for them (Parry and Aymerich (2021)). Finally, strong religious beliefs may increase the likelihood that individuals stay in their home communities even in the presence of violence (Kaplan (2021)), as well as making them more likely to encourage others to return. Our paper augments these studies, which focus on specific factors, by considering return as a whole in terms of discussions occurring in these communities. As a result, we can determine if the factors outlined here are present in social media discourse and to what extent discussion of them differs.

# **3.2 Social Media and Information Access**

Beginning with the protests in 2011, social media has played an integral role in the Syrian civil war leading researchers to refer to it as the “most socially mediated civil conflict in history” (Lynch et al. (2014)). In the early stages of conflict platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook were used by civilian activists to organize and share images of the protests (Freelon et al. (2015)). As the protests evolved into war, many of the key players became involved on social media. Extremist groups have used Twitter to spread their ideology (Klausen (2015), Wei et al. (2016)), as well as sectarian hate speech (Siegel and Badaan (2020), Abdo (2015)), and propaganda (Chatfield et al. (2015)), while Syrian Opposition Forces have used Facebook to communicate their 7