When Unrest Stirs, Bloggers Are Already in Place

As the protests spread across Tunisia for weeks, many international news organizations scrambled to cover the unrest just before President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled on Jan. 14, ending 23 years of authoritarian rule. But Amira al-Hussaini was all over the story. Hussaini oversaw a handful of bloggers who gathered information about the mounting protests in Tunisia for Global Voices, a volunteer-driven organization and platform that works with bloggers all over the world to translate, aggregate and link to online content. As part of its reporting, she said, the site turned to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, where other bloggers and hundreds of ordinary people stepped into the role of citizen journalists and shared their experiences, cellphone photos and videos online. The organization is now an independently operated nonprofit, financed mostly with private donations and grants from foundations. It is led by Ivan Sigal, who studied the role of citizen media in conflict zones at the United States Institute of Peace, before taking over as executive director in 2008. With no physical office, he oversees a virtual team of about 20 staff editors and more than 300 volunteer bloggers and translators outside the United States.