Social media failed to shape mainstream media coverage of Tun. events

"What strikes me about events in Tunisia is that social media seems to have failed in what many of us thought would be its greatest contribution (outside of social mobilization) -- that is, in helping to generate and shape the coverage of events in the mainstream media" - E. Morozov

" On the contrary, despite all the buzz on Twitter it took four weeks to get the events in Tunisia on the front pages of major newspapers"

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This is not to deny that many of us were watching the Tunisian events unfold via Twitter. But let's not kid ourselves: This is still a very small audience of overeducated tech-savvy people interested in foreign policy. I bet that 90% of Twitter users are not like that -- and that percentage will get worse as Twitter becomes more mainstream. So, if we evaluate it in terms of awareness-raising by exploiting and building off the mainstream media, Tunisia's "Twitter Revolution" (as Andrew Sullivan was already quick to dub it), seems to have failed"

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it strikes me as improbable that some people in Tunisia had a higher chance of learning about the protests from the Internet than they did from conversations in the streets."
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