The impact of social media on Arab spring has been debated since protests began, and will likely be debated for several years to come. Pollack asserts, however, that efforts in Tunisia started in 1998, when Takriz was formed to advocate for free speech and started efforts to move more people online. As late as 2008, just 3,000 Tunisaians were on Facebook; by the start of this year’s riots, that had jumped to 1.97 million, or more than half of the country’s entire population.
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Technology has empowered all sides in this skirmish: the rioters, the vigilantes, the government and even the ordinary citizens eager to help. But it has empowered all of them to different degrees. As the British police, armed with the latest facial-recognition technology, go through the footage captured by their numerous closed-circuit TV cameras and study chat transcripts and geolocation data, they are likely to identify many of the culprits. Authoritarian states are monitoring these developments closely. Chinese state media, for one, blamed the riots on a lack of Chinese-style controls over social media. Such regimes are eager to see what kind of precedents will be set by Western officials as they wrestle with these evolving technologies. They hope for at least partial vindication of their own repressive policies.
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