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The shortcomings of the so-called mainstream media have become something of a stale trope. Traditional media does some things well, other things poorly, vice-versa for blogging and other social media. But the neglect of the situation in Tunisia by the media in general, and American media in particular, is beyond the pale.

Since a young Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire on December 17 to protest conditions in his North African country, and the country went up in flames, most Western, and all American media, has been unearthly silent.

Two recent groups of cheesed-off kids have used online tools to circumvent both those who put them down and the creaky old activists who they believe no less authoritarian. Gaza Youth Breaks Out, from Palestine, and the fenqing, or "angry youth" movement in China have rejected the whole lot of old farts who they believe are responsible for stranding them in the present. And they're not being nice about it.

Gaza Youth are a group from the Strip who have taken Facebook by storm, printing a manifesto that is so uncompromising and so full of rejection not just for Israeli occupiers but the bullies and schnorrers in their own communities that reading it is like coming up for air.

The 112th US Congress, which will run for the next two years, will kick-off with swearing in tomorrow at noon EST. For the first time in history, the first day at least will be live broadcast on giant social network Facebook, according to an announcement CNN says Republican leadership will make today. It's big news, but it also raises interesting questions about media and politics in the current era.

Specifically, the live streaming will be done on the Republicans' page for PledgeToAmerica. When the Obama inauguration was live broadcast in 2009, the video appeared on CNN.com but was powered by Facebook Connect, which allowed viewers to see comments posted exclusively by their Facebook friends, if they so chose. CNN said at the time that 5.3 million video streams of that event were delivered.

Reporters Without Borders reports that several diplomatic cables that have come out via Wikileaks indicate Cuba is more worried about bloggers than traditional activists.

In a cable from April of last year, Jonathan Farrar, chief of mission of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana agrees with a news op-ed that calls the traditional dissidents "old and out of touch."

What's the fastest way to evaluate the true behavior of a Senator or Representative in Congress? How about through a ready-made mathematical model and some charts? That's what Josh Tauberer has created as the latest project at congress-tracking site GovTrack.us. (Numerical methods for determining leadership and ideology in Congress)

"Bulk access to legislative information makes large-scale statistical analyses possible," Tauberer writes. He's performed analyses he says are like Google's Pagerank, but for politicians: he's tracked which politicians vote together in order to discover moderates and extremists, and he's treated sponsorship and co-sponsorship of legislation like an endorsement of leadership, similar to the way Google treats links between Web pages as an endorsement. The resulting chart, below, tracks Senate members on axis of leadership and ideology. It's a fascinating way to see important qualitative matters quantified and to get a quick snapshot of politicians you might not follow very closely. Something like this could also be helpful in assessing claims and pushing for accountability of elected officials.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has released a new study, "Politics goes mobile."

Among other findings, mobile phone users voted more often than others, those votes were equally balanced between Republican and Democrat and young users were more often to use their mobile phones for political goals than others. Overall, 82% of American adults own a mobile and a quarter use them to connect politically, according to Pew.

This weekend, Alexander Lukashenko won a fourth term as president of Belarus. Official statements that he received nearly 80% of the vote have been met by the West decrying flaws and violent clashes involving thousands of protesters that have turned out into the streets. Eight of the 10 opposition candidates are reported to have been arrested, along with hundreds of protesters. As the government of Belarus cracks down, the Web is waking up to the news. Here are online windows into what's happening.

The 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution is being commemorated by a revolution, this one in film. And this revolution is being televised, so to speak, on YouTube.

Mexican cinema has experienced a revolution over the last decade. A handful of the film-makers responsible for this revolution have joined forces for Revolución, a feature film made of 10 short films addressing the Revolution and its aftermath. It will be available to watch on YouTube free for 24 hours, beginning November 20th, the date the Revolution began 100 years ago.

This morning, the new Foursquare Elections page went live. And when the polls open, Foursquare users who check in at polling places around the country will receive an official badge. If they choose, they can shout out to friends on Foursquare or their followers on Twitter using the #IVoted hashtag.

In the interview below, filmed at the NASA Tweetup at the Kennedy Space Center on the eve of Election Day, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley talks about how game mechanics, shaking the hand of a "robonaut" and what has drawn over 4 million people to try the service. "It's not just getting points and winning badges," he said. "It makes your days more interesting."

As most readers probably know by now, Julian Assange, Wikileaks' leader, has gone ahead with the release of 391,832 secret documents related to the war in Iraq. These documents cover most of the period between May 2004 and March 2009.

The information was released in three forms, the "Diary Dig," the "Warlogs" and bittorrent download in CSV and SQL formats.