A Digital Ménage à Trois: Strategic Leaks, Propaganda and Journalism [DRAFT ATTACHED] (original) (raw)
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2013
New media are now contributing to the democratization of access to information, its creation, and its consumption. This has effectively altered the coveted gatekeeping and public agenda setting roles usually ascribed to traditional media. At the same time, a new relationship is emerging between these Web 2.0 media platforms and their traditional media counterparts, especially print media. While newspapers sometimes rely on less encumbered online sources for cutting-edge news exposes, the new-media entities also often count on the long-established traditional media institutions to provide credibility and critical analysis of new media’s Web-generated news content. It is this notion of a conjoint approach to political exposure that was evident in the WikiLeaks engagement of and association with traditional news entities such as the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, the Jamaica Gleaner, and other newspapers as outlets for its classified secret content. The chapter argues that ...
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This chapter offers an analysis of one instance of "mass self-communication" namely the website WikiLeaks. Founded in 2006 by Australian internet activist Julian Paul Assange, WikiLeaks aimed to facilitate an anonymous electronic drop box for whistleblowers. WikiLeaks has promoted the cause of investigative journalism, organising citizens into a powerful force of news-gatherers, and laying bare a wealth of privileged information. By first disrupting and then decentralising relations of power, WikiLeaks encourages new ways of thinking. At the heart of this process is a radical recasting of what counts as a public service ethos, one which promises to reinvigorate traditional conceptions of journalism's role and responsibilities in a democratic culture.
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Making sensitive or even secret information public was hitherto the domain of investigative journalism. WikiLeaks has made it possible for whistleblowers to shed light on anything they think the general public should know about. This has given birth to a new breed of journalism. The new way of bringing sensitive information to the public is much less responsible in many respects, even though it can by some measures fulfil the norm of fairness. Who are the affected parties and what are the pros and cons? These are the questions this article seeks to answer by comparing WikiLeaks with classic journalism.