Abstract
On December 17, 2010, a young Tunisian man, Mohammad Bouazizi, set fire to himself in front of the county headquarters of Sidi Bouzid. On the same day, Facebook activists streamed videos of people protesting in front of the county headquarters. After a week of protests, when the first victim of the confrontations fell, photographs and images were fed into Tunisian television intended to portray a conspiracy organized by “extremists” and “opponents” who threatened the security of the Tunisian state. Meanwhile, Facebook was overwhelmed with protest videos, at first through covert exchanges, then, as the protest strengthened, through sharing and publishing on personal pages. On the evening of January 14, 2011 al-Jazeera channel, which had played a decisive role in coverage of the protests by airing the videos produced by the Facebook activists, announced the flight of Ben Ali from the country.
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© 2016 Sadok Hammami
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Hammami, S. (2016). The Three Phases of Facebook: Social Networks and the Public Sphere in the Arab World—the Case of the Tunisian Revolution. In: Jayyusi, L., Roald, A.S. (eds) Media and Political Contestation in the Contemporary Arab World. The Palgrave Macmillan Series in International Political Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137539076_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137539076_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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