Before and after the Tunisian Revolution in December 2010, bloggers played a critical role in information dissemination—spreading news, ideas and accounts of human rights violations.

USAID, through its Office of Transition Initiatives, partnered with the Andalous Institution for Tolerance and Anti-Violence, a Kasserine-based civil society organization, to support a workshop in February 2013 for the most prominent bloggers from the interior of Tunisia. Twenty-four bloggers, including five women, from Sidi Bouzid, Gafsa and Kasserine participated in the two-day workshop designed to help bloggers share experiences about blogging in their respective communities and to be constructive players in the media and information landscape in Tunisia. The bloggers received technical and editorial training from nationally renowned bloggers based in Tunis and Sfax.

The timing of the meeting was critical as it occurred immediately following the assassination of prominent opposition leader Chokri Belaid. The participants spoke at length about the ethics and responsibilities associated with social media and created a charter designed to hold the social bloggers accountable to one another for ethically sound and properly sourced material on their respective blogs. Additionally, the bloggers created a Facebook group to develop a network of bloggers reporting on social and political issues in the interior of Tunisia.

Hussein*, a blogger from Sfax said, “I really cannot find words to describe my feelings when I look at the brilliant bloggers around the same table. This has motivated me to develop a code of ethics and draft a book with these ethics to share for free online.”