I noted yesterday that some pundits have been calling the Tunisian revolt a "WikiLeaks revolution." The phrase "Twitter revolution," last spotted wandering around Tehran in a daze, has made a comeback as well. So now we're in for a big boring debate about whether these boosterish labels fit, an argument that threatens to overshadow some much more interesting questions. The Internet is a series of tools. Some of those tools were used in Tunisia. I'd love to see some detailed investigations of how they were used, how they affected the use of older tools and tactics, how they advanced and/or held back the struggle, and how the regime responded to them. Debating whether their presence makes this a "[fill-in-the-blank] revolution," by contrast, seems pointless.

Yes, "Twitter revolution" is a silly simplification—like calling the truck blockades of the '70s a "Citizens Band revolution." Social media were a part of the uprising, but social media did not cause the uprising, social media were not the only tools used in the uprising, and social media were not the only important media in the uprising. And Twitter was hardly the only significant social media platform at work. As for WikiLeaks—well, indications right now are that it played at best a minor role in what went down, though the possibility that it played any role at all seems worthy of our attention. Not because that will help us understand the big picture with regard to Tunisia, but because it may help us understand the big picture with regard to WikiLeaks.

But saying "this wasn't a Twitter revolution" is a simplification too, because it makes it sound like Twitter wasn't part of the picture. As Juan Cole points out, "Revolutions are always multiple revolutions happening simultaneously." I'm far more interested in how those insurrections fit together than in how they'll be branded.

Update: Marc Lynch has some sharp thoughts on the subject: