Tunisia and the New Arab Media Space from Marc Lynch by Marc Lynch

http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/15/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.   That feels like a sentence which I've written a hundred times over the last decade.... and one which has never felt more true than the last month in Tunisia.
Calling Tunisia a "Twitter Revolution" is simplistic, but even skeptics have to recognize that the new media environment mattered.  I would suggest that analysts not think about the effects of the new media as an either/or proposition ("Twitter vs. al-Jazeera"), but instead think about new media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, SMS, etc) and satellite television as collectively transforming an complex and potent evolving media space.   Without the new social media, the amazing images of Tunisian protestors might never have escaped the blanket repression of the Ben Ali regime --- but it was the airing of these videos on al-Jazeera, even after its office had been shuttered, which brought those images to the mass Arab public and even to many Tunisians who might otherwise not have realized what was happening around their country.  This is similar to how the new media empowered Egyptian "Kefaya" protestors in the early 2000s and Lebanese protestors in 2005, but in a significantly changed media space.