Twitter, Wikileaks and Tunisia
Issandr El Amrani | Tunisia There's been a lot of speculation, notably in the US, over the role social media played in the Tunisian revolution (it sure feels nice to say those two words.)
Wikileaks may have played a minor atmospheric rule in baring to the whole world what was whispered about the Ben Ali regime's corruption, showing that US diplomats were aghast at the mafia nature of his regime.
Social media, from Twitter and Facebook to video upload sites, were crucial in spreading the word about what happened in a country where the press was tightly muzzled. It generated tremendous amounts of solidarity in the Arab world in beyond. But it's just a means of communication, not a driver in itself.
At the end of the day, Tunisians took the streets because they had enough. They risked getting shot and beaten with no guarantee of success. And it's likely that if they hadn't heard about events around their country through Twitter and Facebook, they would have heard it by telephone. The difference is one of velocity: the technology available today allows for faster and more efficient distribution of information, notably including video.
I'll be discussing the same today, at 17:30 Cairo Time, on al-Jazeera English.
Reader Comments (8)
Beautiful!
We are all Tunisians
We are seeing the beginning of something very, very big.
I also think that the difference between having access to information via word of mouth and the internet is credibility.. the fact that everyone could access the original source of information and not via via via makes its effect much more powerful on the individual level which in my opinion is the source of the driving force you were talking about. Part of it has something to do with the credibility of the text over oral information and the other has to do with the visual medium.. photos and videos..
Wow, I found it amazing that it took foreign diplomats with their ivy league educations and in their guarded compounds to tell average Tunisians IN ENGLISH that their government was a dictatorship.
The amount of condescension that people have about wikileaks and the Tunisian revolution is just staggering.
I would bet 1000 dollars that if you asked the average Tunisian why they were rioting that they would not even have heard of wikileaks.
Not everything that happens in the world is about domestic US politics.
Tunisia citizens didn't need wikileaks to know abou about rulers corruption.t
Not all those diplomats are ivy league educated, so of them are from good old US state schools, are honorable, 1st generation Americans and despise graft, greed and corruption. I find it refreshing that they were so horrified by the actions of the ruling class that they felt the need to alert the US gov of this dangerous behavior (after all, isn't this the way the 3rd world operates?). I cheer the Tunisians and their quest for a more just existence -- I just hope that a darker force does not step in to fill the void and result in further bloodshed and oppression. Freedom is great -- but you need to be a moral people to enjoy it successfully. With regard to Wikileaks, well, it had to happen some day -- if not them -- someone else, the Internet is the greatest democratising force in history -- lets hope that the despots in the rest of the world heed the cries from the streets of Tunis.
I can’t wait til wikileaks drop the BoA Fraud Documents