The Arab Spring
A street vendor's self-immolation sets off uprisings across the Arab world.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1 years
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Mohamed Bouazizi burns himself in Tunisia in December 2010 after official harassment, and protests spread to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria within weeks, coordinated substantially through social media. Tunisia's transition holds; Egypt returns to military rule; Libya, Yemen and Syria descend into civil wars still running. It demonstrated both the mobilising power of networked communication and its limits once mobilisation ends.