Mashups as a journalistic – and political – tool: Tunisia example
The Tunisian Prison map is a great example of how you can use mashups as a base for journalism or political lobbying.
Based on a google map, Sami Ben Gharbia has pinpointed Tunisian prisons and shows information about prisoners and what crimes they are convicted of. If you click on one of the pointers, you get an information overview, links to more info, and often a YouTube video clip about it.
One example – information about the prison of Kef:
2- Thecase of the Youth of Kef condemned for downloading an mp3 (See the flash animation here) of a HipHop song criticizing the brutality of the Tunisian police service (more info here and here)- (an other flash animation about the song).
In his blog, Sami Ben Gharbia writes:
Worse than a taboo the Tunisian penitentiary system is a state affair, a question of national security. All those who dared approach the topic, reveal its secrets or point fingers to its dysfunctions dearly paid their imprudence.
/…/
While in other countries the freedom of information includes the public right to access information detained by the public authorities, in Tunisia we are confronted with security obsessed reflex and a pseudo requirement of national interest, thus depriving the citizens from their elementary right of being informed. That justifies the lead cover imposed by the local authorities who, under biased pretences do no longer feel any obligation to publish categories of essential information about the country and hence the censure about divulgation of any information on the criminality rate or the number of prisons and its population… as if these information belonged to private heritage of the governing authorities!
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