The Challenges of Governments in Cyberspace (the case of Tunisia and Libya)

In the 21st century, the formation of cyberspace which is the result of information and communication technology and the Internet, Caused unprecedented challenges to the political systems and concepts such as national interests, national security, and governmental values in ruling over the countries, and government structures have been criticized and challenged through cyberspace. In this new era, protest movements and revolutions were shaped through civil spaces. With the expansion of cyberspace, new aspects of the transformation of governments have been created; in a way that the changes in West Asia and North Africa illustrate this issue. Therefore, this study examines how much cyberspace can create the context for the challenges and changes to the governments. To this end, attention was given to the theories of Castells, Toffler, Lucien Pie, alternative media and theories of governance. In one part, the library study and Chronicle developments of Tunisia and Libya's were considered , and in the other part, using the questionnaire's technique, the viewpoint of 176 experts in this field were analyzed. The findings show that cyberspace has a significant relationship with all the components of the government's challenge. Among the components of cyberspace, the social media space (Gumbo and Twitter), blog space, e-mail, interactive spaces and newsgroups, respectively, have the greatest impact on the changes and developments. Moreover,Among the challenges of governments, the political existence of the country, the values of government, national interests and national security are threatened by cyberspace, respectively.