‘Vive la grande famille des médias tunisiens’ Media reform, authoritarian resilience and societal responses in Tunisia

The concept of authoritarian upgrading introduced by Heydemann significantly contributes to explain how Arab authoritarian rulers have been able to maintain their grip on power while introducing a number of liberal reforms. The media reform in Tunisia has been widely interpreted indeed as one of those liberal reforms implemented to give domestic and international constituencies the sentiment that genuine liberalisation is under way in the country and it has therefore been dismissed as a façade reform. While this interpretation contains a degree of validity, this paper challenges the notion that the reform is exclusively about authoritarian upgrading. Perhaps unwittingly, the reform has permitted the arrival on the media scene of new social voices and actors that never had the opportunity to discuss taboo topics and this transforms public debate. While political discussions were excluded and political pluralism absent, the new private media managed to challenge previously prevailing notions of national unity and homogeneity.