Much has been written about the potential of large-scale digital disclosures, or ‘megaleaks’, to transform journalistic coverage of high-value news. This analysis takes a second look at the ...phenomenon by analyzing three of the best-known megaleaks to date: those disclosed by Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and John Doe, the source of the Panama Papers. To what extent did these large-scale disclosures disrupt the media capture that distorts or limits coverage by an autonomous press? A study of circumstances surrounding these three megaleaks suggests that their main effect was encouraging a culture of collaborative work that favors independence from official sources.
This study explains when, how and why WikiLeaks emerged as a global phenomenon. Its media strategies were clearly systematised into three stages. Web analytics tools were used to collect data from ...four different levels of digital popularity: Google searches for the term "WikiLeaks",
"WikiLeaks" website traffic, Twitter activity and Twitter followers. Data for more than five years were analysed (from December 2006, when WikiLeaks arose, to the Stratfor case, in 2012). Our results indicate that, in the age of the network society, the popularity of a digital and antiestablishment
phenomenon such as WikiLeaks (and the impact of its messages) paradoxically depends on traditional press newspapers ("quality press"). Therefore, newspapers still maintain their influence and legitimising power.
This paper interrogates the attention that Chelsea Manning has received within the academy. It begins from the observation that despite being responsible for the largest classified document leak, ...work within Political Geography and International Relations that engages with this data remains notably scant. This claim emerges from a systematic search of peer-reviewed materials using WikiLeaks materials as their empirical base, compiling a database of papers written about Manning. We then examine the possible reasons for this absence, focusing upon a series of what we term ‘obfuscating practices’ by which state actors complicate access to publicly accessible knowledge, including access to the US Army's Freedom of Information Request Website, and the court documents from Manning's court-martial. Finally, we look at claims of an embargo around the publication of academic work in this area, conceptualising this as a politics of paranoia and commenting upon the implications of this for knowledge curation within the academy.
In today's globalised world a country's image is an important consideration because it can influence that country's politics and economy (Shimko 1991. Images and Arms Control: Perceptions of the ...Soviet Union in the Reagan Administration. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Viosca Jr., Blaise, and Balsmeier. 2005. 'Country Equity: South Africa, a Case in Point.' Journal of Promotion Management 12 (1): 85-95). Scholars have noted that the news media are considered to be major players in creating national images and swaying public perception of foreign countries (Entman, 2008. 'Theorizing Mediated Public Diplomacy: The U.S. Case.' The International Journal of Press/Politics 13 (2): 87-102; Wanta, Golan, and Lee. 2004. 'Agenda Setting and International News: Media Influence on Public Perceptions of Foreign Nations.' Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 81: 364-377). The present study examined United States' image typologies in news editorials in Britain and France. Using image theory as a theoretical foundation, this present study employed in-depth qualitative thematic analysis of editorials in The Guardian and Le Monde covering the release of classified U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks. The overarching U.S. image revealed by editorials did not exactly fit in with the normative images of ally, enemy, complex, imperialist, and colonial/dependent. It did, however, approach the complex image that entailed elements of the ally and imperial image.
WikiLeaks Leigh, David; Harding, Luke
2013, 2011, 2013-10-01, 20110101
eBook
A team of journalists with unparalleled inside access provides the first full, in-depth account of WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and the ethical, legal, and political controversies it has ...both uncovered and provoked.
Drawing on the concepts of paradigm repair and professional boundary work, this study examined the way the New York Times and the Guardian portrayed the whistle-blowing group WikiLeaks as being ...beyond the bounds of professional journalism. Through a textual analysis of Times and Guardian content about WikiLeaks during 2010 and early 2011, the study found that the Times depicted WikiLeaks as outside journalism’s professional norms regarding institutionality, source-based reporting routines, and objectivity, while the Guardian did so only with institutionality. That value thus emerged as a supranational journalistic norm, while source-based reporting routines and objectivity were bound within national contexts.
WikiLeaks is among the most controversial institutions of the last decade, and this essay contributes to an understanding of WikiLeaks by revealing the philosophical paradigm at the foundation of ...Julian Assange’s worldview: cypherpunk ethics. The cypherpunk movement emerged in the early-1990s, advocating the widespread use of strong cryptography as the best means for defending individual privacy and resisting authoritarian governments in the digital age. For the cypherpunks, censorship and surveillance were the twin evils of the computer age, but they viewed encryption as a means to circumvent both. As a cypherpunk, Assange advocates for the use of cryptography in the fight for individual privacy as well as the fight for global justice. His cosmopolitan disposition is informed by his hacker background, antiwar principles, and Enlightenment outlook. This essay places Assange’s philosophical idea in historical context, exploring his views on censorship, surveillance, and the right to communicate. It also connects his cypherpunk principles to WikiLeaks, showing that the strategy of encouraging data leaks from powerful political and economic organizations is classic cypherpunk political praxis.
In this article, WikiLeaks is embedded within broader debates relevant to both social movement and mediation theory. First, the nature of the ties between a variety of relevant actors are assessed. ...Second, the networked opportunities and constraints at a discursive and material level of analysis are highlighted and finally the resistance strategies they employ towards mainstream culture are addressed. It is concluded that at the heart of information and communication resistance a dynamic dialectic can be observed between mediated opportunities for disruptions and attempts of the powers that be to close down these opportunities. Furthermore, it has to be acknowledged that reliance on mainstream actors and structures for exposure, funding or hosting contentious content comes with risks for radical activists.
It has been said that the 2010 WikiLeaks disclosures mark ‘the end of secrecy in the old fashioned, cold-war-era sense’. This is not true. Advocates of WikiLeaks have overstated the scale and ...significance of the leaks. They also overlook many ways in which the simple logic of radical transparency – leak, publish, and wait for the inevitable outrage – can be defeated in practice. WikiLeaks only created the illusion of a new era in transparency. In fact the 2010 leaks revealed the obstacles to achievement of increased transparency, even in the digital age.
Points for practitioners
Some commentators have regarded the WikiLeaks disclosures of 2010 as evidence of a broader breakdown in the conventional mechanisms for controlling government-held information. This new world has been described as one of ‘radical transparency’. But claims about the breakdown of old-style secrecy are overwrought. This article says that the significance of the WikiLeaks disclosures has been exaggerated, and provides reasons why it will be harder to achieve radical transparency, especially in the security sector of government.
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