The Syrian conflict has been raging for well over four years. What began as a confrontation between Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Syrian protesters soon turned into a war in which more than 70 rebel groups fight against each other, regime forces and regime-affiliated armed groups, as well as a terrorist organisation that has managed to sow fear in the hearts of people far removed from the conflict itself.

Now, more than ever, the story of a war as complicated as this one needs to be told in a responsible, balanced, and dignified manner. But over the course of the conflict, this process too has undergone drastic change. Where once, seasoned international war correspondents could be relied on to bear witness to the events unfolding on the ground, today only those who have a personal stake in the country’s rebuilding are willing to risk their lives not just to get the news out, but also to give Syrians inside a voice.

Over four years of conflict, Syria has become a graveyard for both international and local journalists. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 86 reporters have been killed since 2011. More than 90 journalists have been abducted in the country since the conflict began, and approximately 25 are currently missing. Now, most major news organisations refuse to send their staff into the conflict, international freelancers deem the country too dangerous to venture into, and local journalists, like most citizens, are choosing to seek asylum elsewhere.

In spite of these developments, information is still overwhelmingly available. Images of the suffering are still being broadcast to the world, this time by ordinary Syrians, untrained in the profession of journalism. Information is leaving Syria in raw form, without context, free for use and misuse by all stakeholders in the war. However, this new generation of citizen journalists has increasingly been developing their skills, expertise, and communications platforms.

“Never in Syrian history has the media landscape been so rich and diversified: citizen journalist networks, online and printed newspapers, news websites, magazines, facebook groups, radios, individual bloggers and net-activists, televisions, web aggregators: they all contribute to shaping an incredibly vital and pluralist space for the exchange of facts and opinions. Despite the fragility and the difficult conditions that characterise this cultural environment, it is here also that the idea of a future Syria is framed and negotiated,” wrote Enrico De Angelis for openDemocracy, an electronic magazine which has partnered with independent digital media project Syria Untold, to archive and provide context for the barrage of information coming out of Syria.

In November 2015, IFEX spoke to individuals working with four independent Syrian collectives operating anonymously inside the war-torn country, to find out what motivates them to keep going despite the grave and often, fatal, risks involved. Each of the four collectives has lost at least one of their members to the war.

We begin with those operating in one of the most vulnerable cities in Syria today: the northern city of Raqqa, captured in January 2014 and dubbed the capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, widely known as Daesh in the Arab world. Over the coming days, we will be featuring three other groups working to document life in their war-torn homeland.

Part One: Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (@Raqqa_SL)

What the international community knows about life in Raqqa under the brutally oppressive rule of Daesh, it knows because of the brave work of the anonymous activists that make up the group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), recently awarded the Committee To Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award.

In April 2014, four months after the city fell to the militant group, 17 activists and natives of Raqqa – men and women who had risen up against the Assad regime only to find themselves under the brutal rule of another – got together and decided to document life under Daesh. By that time, Raqqa had transformed from a normal Syrian city where children went to school, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, and women worked in offices, clinics and restaurants, to a city draped in black – to match the militant group’s ominous flag. RBSS activists started using their cellphones to record and disseminate videos and images of public lashings, beheadings, sexual abuse, and other instances of oppression.

Within weeks of launching, Daesh had dubbed the group an “enemy of god” and sought to punish any and all those they deemed affiliated with it. Soon after, RBSS witnessed the death of one of its founding members.

Al-Moutaz Bellah Ibrahim, 21, was kidnapped and held by Daesh for three weeks before being executed in a public square in Raqqa. Shocked and saddened, but refusing to give up, his colleagues decided to bolster and further secure their means of communication. Some left the city for Turkey and other countries in Europe, and took over responsibility for most of the social media aspect of their work. Others remained on the ground and found ways to covertly supply their colleagues on the outside, and in turn, the world beyond, with a constant stream of news from the war.

RBSS now has around 44,000 avid followers on Twitter and just under 200,000 on Facebook. They are relied on by various international media organisations for first-hand reports of daily life inside a city where most people live fearing both the wrath of Daesh and the indiscriminate airstrikes of the U.S.-led coalition against it. IFEX reached out to Tim Ramadan (not his real name) who now lives in Urfa and handles some of the group’s operations from there.

What keeps you going?