First thoughts on Tunisia and the role of the Internet

[Commentary] 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. 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, at least here in the U.S. (the situation in Europe was somewhat better -- and it was way better in the Middle East -- for all the obvious reasons).

How does it fare historically? Well, much of the enthusiasm related to the "Twitter Revolutions" in Moldova and Iran was based on the expectation that social media would help to push these events on the agenda of traditional media -- and it actually worked. By 2011, however, I think that the novelty had worn off -- and few media outlets were interested in carrying "Social Media Changes Everything!" stories. I'm sure there are many other reasons why Tunisia matters less than Iran for most media -- but then so did Moldova…