The internet in Tunisia

The use of the internet in Tunisia is fairly widespread, at least for an Arab nation. Compared to the west they still lag behind in usage but the gap is closing. Tunisia is an interesting study when it comes to internet usage because of the fact that the government used to heavily censor it because the internet was viewed as a threat. Since that government was overthrown it would seem that they were right.

Compared to most Arab countries Tunisia has a fairly large number of internet users. This is mostly because they have better access to it than most of the other countries in the Arab world. The government has made a conscious effort to improve service and this has resulted in the best internet system in Northern Africa. Tunisia also offers internet access at a much lower cost than other Arab countries. In part this is because Tunisia has one of the most developed economies in the Arab world. It also helps that they have a close relationship with Europe and a policy that allows foreign companies to operate in the country.

While the internet in Tunisia is fairly widely used up until recently it was also heavily censored. Unlike most Muslim countries the censorship had little to do with maintaining social norms or the tenets of Islam, Tunisia is fairly relaxed in this regard. Rather the censorship had more to do with stifling opposition to an unpopular dictator. As a result sites that encouraged democracy or which detailed human rights abuses in Tunisia were the ones that were most likely to be censored. This all changed however with the recent revolution in Tunisia.

In the spring of 2011 Tunisia overthrew their dictator and the new government changed the rules on internet usage. Most of the censorship that had previously existed was removed. By no means can it be said the Tunisians have free access to the internet now but things are much less restricted than before. In particular it is now possible to access social sites like Facebook. Under the old rulers this was impossible since the government can't control the information on those sites. While there is still a long way to go before internet censorship is completely removed in Tunisia there are some promising signs.

The revolution in Tunisia does raise some interesting questions about the use of internet censorship. In a lot of cases governments attempt to control access because they view it as a threat. In the case of Tunisia this turned out to be true. The revolution was largely started online after all. On the one hand this does prove that the internet can be a threat to a government. On the other hand attempting to censor it didn't work to protect the government and in the end just gave the people another reason to rebel. It will be interesting to see how the censorship policies of other countries are changed by what happened in Tunisia.