Social Media, Social Learning Systems, and the Women’s Movement in Tunisia After the Jasmine Revolution

Abstract

Before social media, autocratic regimes maintained power by controlling access to information and resources; they controlled mass media through a combination of abuse, coercion, threats, and bribes. With the advent of social media, and the emergence of a young generation that they can neither co-opt nor effectively threaten, regimes lost much of their effectiveness and control. This chapter discusses how the actors in the Arab Spring revolts used social media to organize events and to report on them, and how access to such tools made the revolts possible. It also shows how technological savviness in terms of using social media is now helping social and political advocacy, in general, and gender advocacy, in particular, as evidenced in the women’s movement in Tunisia, in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution.