How Independent Media Became Revolutionary Infrastructure During the Arab Spring | Activist History

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This essay was featured in our Conscious Citizens Dispatch #38. Click here to read the full newsletter!

In 2010 and 2011, a wave of uprisings swept across the Arab world in what became known as the Arab Spring. In Tunisia and Egypt, decades of authoritarian rule collapsed under the weight of popular protest. But the battle wasn’t just on the streets, it was in the information sphere too. Two independent media organizations formed during this time that became instrumental in informing the masses and generating popular support locally and internationally, even as the governments in power did everything they could to censor and cut off activists from the outside world.

Who Controls the Story Controls the Outcome

Both Tunisia and Egypt had a incredibly strong and sophisticated state media apparatus that controlled the flow of information inside the country to reinforce state-approved narratives. In Egypt, the Mubarak regime had spent decades building a media apparatus designed to keep people confused, isolated, and afraid. In Tunisia, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ran one of the most sophisticated internet censorship operations in the world — a system so pervasive that activists nicknamed it "Ammar 404" (after the error code that appeared when a blocked page was accessed). Independent journalism was effectively illegal.

This is the context that gave birth to RASSD in Egypt and Nawaat in Tunisia — two organizations that approached the same problem from completely different directions, and together, offer one of the clearest blueprints we have for the critical role independent media plays during moments of crisis.

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