In an action that has been going on for a few months and largely ignored outside of the Arab, Francophone and Internatinal Relations world, Tunisians overthrew their repressive and corrupt government and last night Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country. This morning we wake up to the Tech chatterati claiming it was
all due to Twitter!
Eh?
Firstly, lets give some credit to the people of Tunisia! Secondly, as Ethan Zuckerman notes, Social Media had a role but it wasn't only (or even primarily) Twitter.
Iran's diaspora was especially effective at promoting the Green Movement to an online audience that followed tweets, Facebook posts, and web videos avidly, hungry for news from the front lines of the struggle. Tens of thousands of Twitter users turned their profile pictures green in solidarity with the activists, and hundreds set up proxy servers to help Iranians evade Internet filters. For users of social media, the protests in Iran were an inescapable, global story. Tunisia, by contrast, hasn't seen nearly the attention or support from the online community.
The irony is that social media likely played a significant role in the events that have unfolded in the past month in Tunisia, and that the revolution appears far more likely to lead to lasting political change. Ben Ali's government tightly controlled all forms of media, on and offline. Reporters were prevented from traveling to cover protests in Sidi Bouzid, and the reports from official media characterized events as either vandalism or terrorism. Tunisians got an alternative picture from Facebook, which remained uncensored through the protests, and they communicated events to the rest of the world by posting videos to YouTube and Dailymotion. As unrest spread from Sidi Bouzid to Sfax, from Hammamet and ultimately to Tunis, Tunisians documented events on Facebook. As others followed their updates, it's likely that news of demonstrations in other parts of the country disseminated online helped others conclude that it was time to take to the streets. And the videos and accounts published to social media sites offered an ongoing picture of the protests to those around the world savvy enough to be paying attention.
....................
Pundits will likely start celebrating a "Twitter revolution" in Tunisia, even if they missed watching it unfold; the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan already revived the dreaded phrase Thursday.
Ironically he calls his post "
The first Twitter Revolution" - clearly if a revolution doesn't happen on Twitter it isn't real in chatterati circles. Even if it didn't happen on Twitter.
As one wag
noted this morning (on Twitter):
I don't understand how the people of Tunisia overthrew their government without me signing an e-petition or changing my Twitter avatar.
Quite. I recall the #kebab session
taking the p*ss out of Twitter's alleged miraculous qualities at SXSW 2 years ago, it was so overblown even then and - well, no doubt in 2012 the Second Coming will all be due to Twitter as well......
Update - quoting Ethan from
his own blog:
The punchline of that post: assuming the events in Tunisia end up with a transfer of power, and (we all hope) a democratic and fair election, you’re going to hear any number of theories crediting Tunisia’s revolution to Twitter, to Wikileaks, to Anonymous and so on. Be skeptical. A shift this momentous doesn’t come from a single factor – it comes from millions of people, frustrated and pissed off, who find ways to come together and demand change. Oversimplified explanations do a disservice to the bravery of the people who risked – and in many cases, lost – their lives to take to the streets, and disrespect the people who’ve worked for decades for change in their country.
I hope Tunisia finds its way from overthrowing a dictator to building a stable, democratic government.
I hope so too, re democratic government, but the lesson of history is that an overthrowing of a despot is too often followed by a period of chaos and then another despot, in this case the likelihood is a fundamentalist islamic flavoured one. Let's hope this time it's different....
