Sociolatte

Story so far: Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian leader who fled the country after more than 23 years of dictatorship rule, may have fallen because of WikiLeaks and Facebook and the whole social media revolution.  This is what the Telegraph has to say "Mr Ben Ali may also have been the first victim of Wikileaks. Cables by an American ambassador giving colourful descriptions of the lives of luxury pursued by his family, and the business empire it controlled, were eagerly emailed around the country, despite a repressive system of censorship.

Descriptions by other ambassadors of other leaders' political and personal attitudes have not been much less graphic.

On the plus side, protesters also seemed to understand that despite the deaths of scores of rioters, there were limits to how far modern leaders could go in maintaining their rule by force. Maybe that was also a lesson of the crushing of Saddam Hussein, who knew no such limits, by George Bush and Tony Blair."

Protesters have now taken to Social Media to share the latest happenings in Tunisia. Facebook pages have been created, Tweets on Twitter have started flying and YouTube has videos on the riots and protests in Tunsia. t's really nice to see how far dictators can go in a modern world. Well, not too much, as we can see from the way events are headed.

Tweets from Twitter.
Tonight We Are All Tunisian http://www.counterpunch.org/ridley01142011.html #SidiBouzid #Tunisia



LA Times has this to say:
As such, the Internet has been the largest source of documentation of the protests, much of it provided  by the demonstrators themselves, despite Tunisia's strict censorship of the Web.

Of course, given the nature of the Internet, information about the protests can range from propaganda to earnest documentation of the reality on the streets, and a critical, skeptical eye is needed to intelligently take in the flood and diversity of reports online.

The blog NDItech DemocracyWorks remarked on the situation, writing that despite remarkable levels of censorship the protesters "have been assisted by external online activists, notably the collective known as Anonymous. Allies of the regime have reportedly engaged equally enthusiastically, utilizing phishing, censoring, and hacking against activists."

 



[Images Credit: LA Times]