Twitter as a multilingual space: The articulation of the Tunisian revolution through #sidibouzid

Abstract

This article explores how the Tunisian revolution was articulated through Twitter. It does so through a detailed analysis of a sample +100.000 tweets with the hashtag #sidibouzid, posted between 18 December 2010 and 15 January 2011. In addition, nine very active #sidibouzid users were interviewed. This examination shows that #sidibouzid constituted a global communication space, in which different publics were strategically addressed through a variety of languages. How key users employed the different languages and the platform itself, very much depended on their particular position in the Arab diaspora network.