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ABSTRACT
Social media are reputed to have played a crucial role in mobilizing citizens against autocratic governments in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. In Tunisia, digital activists successfully used social media to organize the popular protests that ousted President Ben Ali in January 2011. However, the phase of mobilizing protest to overthrow an established authority is different from constructing a political order to replace that authority. Hence the question arises: In what ways can social media contribute to democratic transitions beyond popular rebellion? This article focuses on the attitudinal factors that lie at the heart of cultural-behavioral approaches to democratization. A key element in the democratic consolidation of post-autocratic societies is the development of a participatory political culture, which, among other factors, depends on citizens’ perceived political efficacy. Using data obtained from a Web survey among 610 Tunisian Internet users, we test the degree to which respondents’ political use of the Internet during the Tunisian uprising influenced their levels of internal political efficacy and whether this shift in attitudes is positively related to measurable changes in electoral participation from authoritarian to post-authoritarian rule.
Notes
1. Over recent years the general trend in international development cooperation has been away from dedicated ICT units and toward mainstreaming: Since 2006, UK's Department for International Development (DFID), Switzerland's Swiss Agency for Development (SDC), and Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) all phased out their dedicated ICT4D divisions in favor of integration of ICT into other programs (CitationHeeks, 2010; CitationMyers, 2009).
2. Censor 404.
3. One Facebook community that brands Ennahda as a criminal organization has 21.262 “likes” (http://www.facebook.com/NAHDHACRIMINEL); the Facebook followership of Sheik Bechir Ben Hasan, a radical Salafist who advocates for the establishment of Sharia law as the main source of legislation in the new constitution, amounts to 104,327 fans.
4. Cecile Feuillatre (Agence France Presse, AFP) on GoogleNews October 9, 2011: Tunisia police thwarts Salafist attack on TV station. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hCxQYeND3OOA-PYPHnJpXhf3ehhg?docId=CNG.0454f4975c6c9282ea46c0cbb683c59b.b91.
5. The term is a composite of the Tunisian dialect, Derya, and the numerical abbreviations typically used in chat forums. It can roughly be translated as “set me free.”
6. Le Courier de l'Atlas, October 16, 2011: «Aatakni» : Les manifestants pour la liberté d'expression plus nombreux que les intégristes. http://www.lecourrierdelatlas.com/98616102011Aatakni-Les-manifestants-pour-la-liberte-d-expression-plus-nombreux-que-les-integristes.html.
7. Political activism in times of regime transformation comes with uncertainties for those who engage in it. This is especially true where activists have been socialized in the political culture of a recently toppled authoritarian regime with the outcome of the transition process remaining unclear. Such was the situation during the field trip for this study, which was undertaken in the week leading up to Tunisia's first democratic election following the ouster of President Ben Ali. Taking into account the diverging risk perceptions of interview partners, the information given by them was therefore subsumed into the narrative of the case study, unless they explicitly agreed to their identity being revealed.
8. The method applied here is similar to the chain-referral sampling methods, which have hitherto been used primarily in social science research to contact hidden or difficult-to-reach populations such as drug users or sex workers (CitationSalganik & Heckathorn, 2004).
11. The average number of “friends” in a Facebook network is 130. Interestingly, this is close to the famous “Number of Dunbar,” named after the anthropologist Robin Dunbar who suggested that the size of the human brain allows one to maintain stable networks of about 148 members (Dunbar, 1998).
12. Other proxy variables for regime support used in the survey were assessments of the regime's performance concerning combating corruption, narrowing the gap between rich and poor, and managing the economy.