What is private, what is public, and who exercises media power in Tunisia? A hybrid-functional perspective on Tunisia's media sector

Abstract

What is the function of the media in post-2011 Tunisia? As the media provides knowledge, message, and reach across a nation, it is a critical tool within the political sphere. As Tunisia undergoes systemic socio-political change, what role is the media playing? How is ‘public’ now being defined? How is the sector changing its own professional practices in the face of a liberated public sphere, and how are media owners responding to market shifts and new faces in the government? These and other questions seeking to understand changes in Tunisia's Fourth Estate over the three years since President Ben Ali was ousted will be analysed through the lens of hybrid theory. As the process of adapting past practices and institutions to new ideological aspirations takes place in Tunisia, hybrid theory offers a means to observe the multiple elements contributing to that process – seeing them as non-linear, intersecting, at times harmonious, and at others, interrupting democratic processes as competing elites – including government officials, and media owners or investors – attempt to capture state power and market share. In analysing the evolution of three separate but related groupings within the media sector: the public (national radio, television, and news agency); the private (with the main focus on the audio-visual sector); and the independent organs for regulation that buffer the state from the media, a picture of elite competition between new democratic and old embedded elites emerges. The push-and-pull between journalists and enterprise owners, between government appointees and line-reporters, and between outlets promoting political agendas and those that do not, are today all part of the new stakes at play in defining Tunisia's Fourth Estate.