Tunisia. Tunisia News - Breaking World Tunisia News. Tunisia: The Revolt Continues - Revolution Through Arab Eyes. Filmmaker: Fatma Riahi "If people want life, destiny will obey. The night will become clear, chains will be broken. Oh protectors of this homeland you make a glorious history. "A slogan of the Tunisian uprising On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a young Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire in the town of Sidi Bouzid. It was the continuation of a battle that, according to blogger Mohamed Boukram, had begun long before: "Our battle against the government started in 2008 following the incident in al-Haoud al-Menjami. Mass protests broke out across Tunisia and a state of panic and fear gripped much of the country.
A month later, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country. Amid the insecurity and lawlessness that accompanied and followed the revolution, citizens formed vigilante groups to protect their property and neighbourhoods from looting, unrest and a possible fightback by Ben Ali loyalists. "This is what Ben Ali did to us. Tunisia and the New Arab Media Space. An interesting discussion has already broken out over whether Tunisia should be considered a "Twitter Revolution" -- a far more interesting and relevant discussion than whether it was a "WikiLeaks Revolution" (it wasn't).
I've seen some great points already by Ethan Zuckerman, Evgeny Morozov, Luke Allnut, Jillian York, and others. I'm looking forward to being one of the social scientists digging into the data, where I suspect that both enthusiasts and skeptics will find support for their arguments. For now, I would just argue that it would be more productive to focus more broadly on the evolution of the Arab media over the last decade, in which new media such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, forums and blogs work together with satellite television stations such as Al Jazeera to collectively transform the Arab information environment and shatter the ability of authoritarian regimes to control the flow of information, images, ideas and opinions.