In March 2015, in the midst of a political transition, Tunisia was rocked by a terrorist attack at the Bardo Museum in downtown Tunis in which 21 people were killed. How did Tunisian journalists manage the tension between a heightened sense of insecurity and the country’s uncertain democratic development? This article analyses journalistic commentary on the causes and implications of terrorism four years into the transition sparked by the Arab uprisings. It provides an empirically nuanced perspective on the role of journalism in political transitions, focusing on journalists as arbitrators in public debate. We argue that influential Tunisian journalists fell back on interpretive schema from the Ben Ali era when they tried to make sense of the Bardo attack, thus facilitating the authoritarian drift of the Tunisian government at the time. They actively contributed to the non-linearity of a political transition, despite enjoying real freedom of speech.

中文翻译：

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政治转型中的恐怖主义辩论：突尼斯的新闻与民主

2015 年 3 月，在政治过渡期间，突尼斯在突尼斯市中心的巴尔多博物馆发生了恐怖袭击，造成 21 人死亡。突尼斯记者如何处理高度的不安全感与该国不确定的民主发展之间的紧张关系？本文分析了关于恐怖主义在阿拉伯起义引发过渡四年后的原因和影响的新闻评论。它为新闻在政治转型中的作用提供了一个经验上细致入微的视角，重点关注记者作为公共辩论中的仲裁者。我们认为，当有影响力的突尼斯记者试图理解巴尔多袭击时，他们回到了本阿里时代的解释模式，从而促进了当时突尼斯政府的专制倾向。