The Internet Freedom Fallacy and the Arab Digital activism

Tags: Iran , Syria , West Asia , Civil Society in West Asia

Sami ben Gharbia is a Tunisian blogger based in The Netherlands. the co-founder of nawaat.org (which means the core in Arabic), a Tunisian collective blog about news and politics and the Advocacy Director at Global Voices.

His blog discusses the risks of Western funding, hyper-politicization and support of digital activism in the Arab World. He states that the direct risks on the digital activism field in the Arab World, in its current early stage of development, are huge and need therefore to be discussed and addressed. His most recent post on his blog "The Internet Freedom Fallacy and the Arab Digital activism" attempts to outline possible strategies for the future of an independent and grassroots Arab digital activism movement and how to better understand and navigate the new chessboard of the “21st-century statecraft”.