Social movements and network analysis in Tunisia before the Arab Spring Citaion: Laura Pérez-Altable (2016) & Saúl Blanco. "Social movements and network analysis in Tunisia before the Arab Spring". Hipertext.net [Online], 2016. Núm. 14. htp://raco.cat/index.php/Hipertext/aricle/view/311836/405621 DOI: 10.2436/20.8050.01.30 Laura Pérez-Altable laura.perez@upf.edu Universitat Pomeu Fabra Saúl Blanco saul.blanco@bluethinking.com Universidad Carlos III Keywords: Social movements, social network analysis, arab spring, acivism 1. Introducion In recent years there has been a great deal of interest on the role of social media in the so-called Arab Spring revolt, but the uprising was not the result of a sudden event. Before it began in late 2010, protests have been staged in some Arab countries that paved the way to this major event (Al-Rawi, 2014, p. 916; Cassara, 2013, p.191). As Gilad Lotan et al. noted (2011, p. 1376) each country has its own context; hence this aricle focusses on Tunisia. Tunisia was the irst Arab country where the Arab Spring began, on December 17, 2010, when Mohammed Bouazizi, a fruit vendor from Sidi Bouzid, set himself on ire in front of a public building. As it is necessary to understand what led to the growing interest on the role of social media, this aricle examines the digital acivism, speciically on Twiter, which took place during the months that preceded the uprising in Tunisia. Thus, this aricle focusses on the latency phase of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, according to the framework proposed by Alberto Melucci in his seminal work Nomads of the present (1989). As Alberto Melucci (1989) explained, in complex socieies, social movements develop only in limited areas and for limited period of imes. Therefore, the hidden network become visible whenever collecive actors confront or come into conlict with a public policy, and this feature of social movements Melucci calls the hidden eicacy of social 1