With war waged against terrorism, questions of ethics and deontology have faded into the background. In the meantime, media treatment of the Bardo Attack is a textbook case of politicization that allows us to measure the ambiguity of relations between media and power. The trigger effect of security discourse has mobilized judiciary and police organs born and bred under a dictatorship that was immune to the threat of terrorism. To what extent can regulations contain this return to normalization?
Amidst the distilled information and tones of alarmism and pessimism that stifle quality discussions on terrorism in mainstream media, one finds the insight and information provided by members of civil society, activists, government officials active on social media platforms. Such a plurality of perspectives is important for fleshing out and expanding a discussion that is commonly portrayed as a two-sided debate between human rights advocates who demand the protection of civil liberties at the expense of effective security measures, and conservative political figures whose rhetoric of national security and unity in the face of terrorism is construed to harbor power and by extension repress fundamental rights.
Up until now, the debate surrounding the role of Twitter and so-called Web 2.0 has remained somewhat polarised. This report then aims to provide an empirical analysis of the available data in order to move away from the binary arguments presented by those who have come to be known as “cyberoptimists” and “cyberskeptics”.
25 January 2011 was the day when people of Egypt went to the streets in several cities to demonstrate against […]
Tunisian activists pounced on the latest Wikileaks US Embassy Cables, dedicating a new website to republish and discuss the revelations […]
A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an op-ed by respected journalist Rami Khoury, entitled “When Arabs Tweet.” […]
Khaled Said is not the first Egyptian whom police allegedly beat to death. But his death has sparked a virtual […]
Far from being exaggerated, the Tunisian anti-censorhip movement is one of the best innovative in the world and has been adopting creative approaches and tactics from its early beginning to its current stage.
Tunisian activists geared up to organize a peaceful demonstration against censorship as part of the May 22 worldwide event announced […]
Tunisia is carrying out one of the most massive wave of online censorship targeting major social websites, video-sharing websites, blogs […]
CONTEST is the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism strategy, with a stated aim to “reduce the risk to the UK and its […]
Over at The Arabist, Issandr El Amrani ruminates on Facebook’s role in Middle Eastern politics, a subject I’ve had my […]
First, governments blocked Blogspot. Then they blocked Facebook, and then Twitter. And just when technophiles all over the globe started […]
The virtual world offers new opportunities for political expression and communication. Why political discussion has migrated to the Internet is […]
I first met Mohamed Nanabhay, the 29-year-old South African, during the 3rd Annual Aljazeera Forum in Doha, Qatar, in 2007. Mohamed is a prominent blogger, a friend and a colleague from Global Voices covering Qatar where he is based. Mohamed is the former Aljazeera head of New Media and the mastermind of the Aljazeera’s successful invasion of the Web.
The extensive palace complex of Tunisia’s septuagenarian dictator, President Zine el-Abidine ben Ali, for example, is off limits to his citizens. Anyone caught taking photographs of the vast complex are likely to be arrested. But cyberspace is beyond President ben Ali’s reach. There his palace is besieged by human rights activists.
Blocking web 2.0 websites (Youtube, Dailymotion, Facebook) and barring access to local outspoken websites and blogs is the most obvious way of cracking down of the online free speech in Tunisia. It should be emphasized, however, that this is only one tool in the regime’s hand. Tunisia has adapted to the web 2.0 revolution by developing a broader strategy composed of a wide range of instruments […]
After little less than a month following the April 6 strike, during which a number of prominent Egyptian bloggers and internet activists were arrested, preparations for the next round of a planned general strike to mark the 80th birthday of President Mubarak, on May 4, 2008, are currently spreading all over the blogosphere and the Internet. Blogger and activist Nora Younis shares some of her ideas with us about […]
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