Social movements and network analysis in Tunisia before the Arab Spring

In recent years, there has been a great deal of interest on the role of social media in the so-called Arab Spring revolt, but the uprising was not the result of a sudden event. Before it began in late 2010, protests have been staged in some Arab countries that paved the way to this major event (Al-Rawi, 2014, p. 916; Cassara, 2013, p.191). As Gilad Lotan et al. noted (2011, p. 1376) each country has its own context; hence this article focusses on Tunisia. Tunisia was the first Arab country where the Arab Spring began, on December 17, 2010, when Mohammed Bouazizi, a fruit vendor from Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire in front of a public building. As it is necessary to understand what led to the growing interest on the role of social media, this article examines the digital activism, specifically on Twitter, which took place during the months that preceded the uprising in Tunisia. Thus, this article focusses on the latency phase of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, following the framework proposed by Alberto Melucci in his seminal work Nomads of the present (1989).

As Alberto Melucci (1989) explained, in complex societies, social movements develop only in limited areas and for limited period of times. Therefore, the hidden network become visible whenever collective actors confront or come into conflict with a public policy, and this feature of social movements Melucci calls the hidden efficacy of social movements (1989, p. 70-73). The identification of this type of action requires an analysis that recognizes the multiple factors (opportunities, limits, response) and does not simply assume that the movement is a given identity.

Thus, the latency and the visible phases of a collective action are the two interrelated poles. In that sense, latency does not mean inactivity; rather, the potential for resistance or opposition is sewn into the everyday life (Melucci, 1989, p. 71).

Following to this idea, the analysis has been carried out in two stages. In Stage 1 we mapped the network of the digital activism in pre-revolutionary Tunisia. Activism in Tunisia has been at work for many years, first offline and then online. Because our study focuses on the Arab Spring in Tunisia, however, this study analyses the digital activism in Tunisia during the year 2010. As we have noted already, we have identified it, according to Melucci’s proposal, as the latency phase of the movement. The second stage focuses on the qualitative content of the content analysis and semi-structured interviews