This paper will analyze the new stakes faced by Tunisia through the case study of the journalistic practices in the post-revolutionary time. I will first analyze the new journalistic practices in Tunisia where civic/citizen journalism plays a growing role, with activists writing on unusual topics and using the web. A transition has taken place wherein militants, such as cyber activists, cyber dissidents, and bloggers have evolved into professional journalists. However, their freedom of expression is limited by censorship. At the same time, using new technologies, they are promoting new practices such as networked journalism and online journalism, which involve the public. The new professional journalists are very important because they did not really exist during Ben Ali’s presidency when journalism was quasi-inexistent. Most professional journalists then suffered from the lack of formation. Nowadays there is in Tunisia a lack of professional journalists. Due to the media boom, several TV channels have opened but professional journalists are very rare. As a result, these new media outlets have begun recruiting bloggers who are becoming professional journalists. New demands from the population for the right to information and transparency are putting pressure on Post-revolutionary journalism in Tunisia to introduce reforms.

This paper looks at Algerian state-society relations in contemporary Algeria to explain ‘why no Algerian Arab Spring.’ Explanations for why no Algerian Spring have focused on the ferocity of the Algerian state, massive distribution of hydrocarbon rent, or the fatigue of a society emerging from a brutal civil war. Problematically, the same explanations, however, have been frequently used to explain persistent authoritarianism in Algeria. While those arguments go a certain distance in explaining the Algerian case, they miss larger developments between state, society, and market in Algeria, which have radically changed the way politics link the citizen to the state and regime. Focusing on a steady decline in voter turnout, citizen confidence in state, party, and civic groups in tandem with a steady rise in localized demonstration, this paper argues that the organic link between state and society is broken. The system of multiparty politics of the 1990s and 2000s is broken. In its wake, Algeria has entered the politics of riots.

The result of democratic elections in Morocco propelled to power the PJD Islamist Party, which has established a working relationship with the parallel institutions of the Makhzen, whose members maintain great powers. Much remains concealed in day to day decision-making within the government and its relations with the Makhzen, meaning that the transitions following the February 20th movement's pressures on King Muhammad VI and the state have not yet yielded the transparency that demonstrators hoped for. Most important decisions remain largely in the private realm. Parliament debates issues, but critical power escapes it. My paper will deal with the coming to power of the PJD government and if and how we might expect changes toward new forms of governance, including greater transparency as a result of the party's internal pressures and the growth of street politics.

This paper explores the weight of digital technology in creating new public spaces for revolt. Women, especially, became empowered by using familiar social networks to participate actively in the organization and realization of the revolt. Data for this paper is based on interviews that I conducted in Tunisia with cyber activists plus a myriad of written and visual sources. By examining stages of the revolt, I conclude that prior to and during the first stage digital technology played a vital role in getting activists to take over and occupy public spaces formerly controlled by the Tunisian state. Erosion of state authority over such spaces speeded up the demise of the Ben Ali regime.