An issue of attribution: The Tunisian revolution, media interaction, and agency

Abstract

Studies of the Arab Spring have been populated with two kinds of media scholarship: while one acknowledges the role of social media in popular uprisings, the other argues that their role has been overblown. Drawing on recent theories of the media, this article seeks to resolve the debate through a media interaction approach, which shows how it is impossible to study the effects of one media form in isolation from those of others. First, how social media and the mainstream news media have interacted in providing the coverage of Tunisian uprising is outlined. This study suggests that not only did these influential news sources rely on a developing distributed mediascape to provide information, they also influenced distributed media in return, suggesting not only an intersection of traditional and distributed media but rather their reformulation. Second, the putative role of social media in popular uprisings shows regional bias in the early days of media coverage while also being indicative of a shift in what constitutes a reliable source within the culture of journalism with Western media displaying a technological determinist slant while the Arab source displays an organic determinist position.

“Everything Has Changed, and Nothing Has Changed in Journalism”: Revisiting Journalistic Sourcing Practices and Verification Techniques during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and Beyond

“…In eerie resemblance to 2011, the crackdown on journalists in Egypt, both local and foreign, continues: the latest of such clampdowns was a raid on the offices of the independent news outlet Mada Masr, resulting in the arrests of three journalists, including its editor-in-chief Lina Attallah and two French journalists from France who happened to be present at the scene. The new public sphere social media generated during the 2011 revolt in Egypt (Harb, 2011;Khamis & Vaughn, 2011;Khamis & Vaughn, 2014;Wolfsfeld et al, 2013;El-Nawawy & Khamis, 2013;Brym et al, 2014;Herrera, 2014;Wolver, 2016) has been hijacked by authorities, who have been using social media effectively to clampdown on any dissident voices. Consequently, the lack of safety and security foreign journalists continue to experience has put pressure on international media to find alternative sources of news coming out of Egypt.…”

Paradoxical populism: how PEGIDA relates to mainstream and alternative media

“…The use of social media platforms by protest movements was particularly investigated during protests which achieved international attention, for example, the Arab Spring (Wolover, 2016), the Gezi Protests in Turkey (Haciyakupoglu & Zhang, 2015) or the Stuttgart 21 protests in Germany (Jungherr & Jürgens, 2013. Other studies point out that controversial movements (such as populist parties or organizations) tend to rely more on alternative media than mainstream media (e.g., Larsson, 2015).…”

Social Media and Social Mobilisation in the Middle East: A Survey of Research on the Arab Spring

“…She analysed Facebook posts from the ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ group page, as well as reports from Al Jazeera English website and articles from The New York Times . Wolover (2016) performed keyword searches to collect articles from The New York Times , The Guardian and Al Jazeera English that appeared between 11 November 2010 and 28 February 2011 for a qualitative textual analysis that provided insights on ‘what the journalists cited as the causal factor of revolution and how they discussed the Internet’s role’ (p. 190).…”

“…Some scholars even focused on the critical day of 28 January 2011, when the Mubarak regime cut off Internet access to the public, which only angered shocked citizens and led to a dramatic escalation in protests (Hassanpour, 2014). Quite a few articles also looked at Tunisia, where the protests had started (e.g., Breuer & Groshek, 2014; Pompper, 2014; Wolover, 2016). Other studies had a broader spatial scope, focusing either on select three or four countries (e.g., Alqudsi-ghabra, 2012; Bruns, Highfield, & Burgess, 2013; Soengas-Pérez, 2013) or dealing with the phenomenon of Arab Spring as a whole.…”