Tunisphere:  How to blog about politics without being censored? · Global Voices
samsoum

Tunisian bloggers seem to have found ways to talk about Tunisian politics while avoiding getting caught by the ATI (Tunisian agency of Internet) watchdogs in charge of denying access and filtering out any site or blog that is critical of the Tunisian government and its members.
After its last campaign in December last year, which targeted multiple blogs that were a little critical about the current situation in the country, ATI seems to be more permissive.
Zizou from Djerba interpreted this as a good sign, hoping that it is a prelude to a new overture from the government, even though he thinks at the same time we saw very few critical posts since that campaign, adding that the last events (gunfights between police and armed Salafists) had to do something with this attitude.
Il est aussi vrai que les blogueurs tunisiens ne se sont plus risqué dans les sujets sensible et le surf sur les sujets borderlines ne semble plus etre le passe temps favori de la majorité des blogueurs.
En tout cas on ne peut pas nier que tout ceci est la consequence de l'episode de Soliman…
The only blogger who remains under surveillance is Mouwaten Tounsi, who is at his 6th new address since last year. Mouwaten chose to be more direct in his posts, especially in his open letter to the president, about more freedom for the Press.
It is true that lately, very few posts were critical to the government.  Critics tend to be very present in commentaries around social or economical posts like Tarek Cheniti's post about the privatization of the education [fr] or very subtle like Isis ‘s post [fr] about the country's accomplishments in the last 51 years since its independence. By trying to expose certain problems without dealing with the cause, bloggers avoid being targeted by ATI.
Another very creative way to avoid censorship while talking politics was initiated by blogger OuNormal (usual). His blog NormalLand is about a virtual country with a virtual governor (himself). He started by assigning department head functions to different Tunisian bloggers.   Being very satiric, his departments are for ultrastructure, black market, fights and disputes  and even one department of corruption! He even created a parliament designated as Znouss counsel (my translation for Znouss is bad boys).  NormalLand has a flag inspired by the real Tunisian flag and a very funny national anthem.
Many bloggers took part in this fiction, especially when OuNormal was victim of coup plotted[Ar] by one his aids Chanfara[Ar]that forced him to stage a presidential election[fr] for which many bloggers announced their candidacy such as Mouwaten[fr]and  Temeraire[fr].
This is in my opinion, very typical of Tunisians, who always come up with ways to work around many limitations in our society.