The WikiLeaks Paradigm

Paradoxes and Revelations

Stephen M. E. Marmura

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319971384
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319971391
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

WikiLeaks poses a unique challenge to state and commercial institutions. This book considers the whistleblower platform's ongoing importance, focusing on the informational and communicative paradoxes it faces, and the shifting strategies it has adopted over time. Attention to these matters provides insight into the nature of the contemporary networked, post-truth media environment, and the types of factors likely to affect the success of activist groups today. Chapter 1 introduces WikiLeaks' significance as a novel expression of counterpower, outlining the disclosures marking its career. Chapters 2 through 4 address the dilemmas confronting WikiLeaks in its attempts to engage the public with and without the cooperation of mainstream news organizations. Chapter 5 appraises how WikiLeaks has adjusted its strategies to take better advantage of a densely populated and globally networked media environment within the larger context of an ongoing political legitimation crisis. Chapter6 extends this analysis to the case of Russiagate.

© The Author(s) 2018

Stephen M. E. MarmuraThe WikiLeaks Paradigmhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97139-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: WikiLeaks as a New Form of Activism

Stephen M. E. Marmura¹

(1)

Department of Sociology, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada

Stephen M. E. Marmura

Abstract

As an electronic whistle-blower platform with global reach, WikiLeaks poses a unique challenge to state and commercial institutions. Yet, its efforts to galvanize the public have met with uneven success. To understand why, and to appreciate WikiLeaks’ significance as an expression of counterpower, it is necessary to consider the informational and communicative paradoxes the group faces. These paradoxes must be examined in relation to the contingencies and longer-term political and economic trends affecting WikiLeaks’ fortunes, and the shifting strategies the group has pursued over time. Attention to these matters provides insight into the nature of the networked, post-truth media environment and the challenges it poses to activists today.

Keywords

RevelationsNewsState powerCounterpowerParadoxes

End Abstract

The whistle-blower platform and activist network known as WikiLeaks made its official appearance in 2006 with the registration of its website, WikiLeaks.org . Since that time, the organization and its charismatic leader, Julian Assange, have gained worldwide attention and remain the subject of intense political and academic controversy. While WikiLeaks was not the first player to leak state or corporate secrets to the public, the unprecedented scope and scale of its disclosures were guaranteed to earn the group notoriety. That much was apparent during 2010 when WikiLeaks began publishing the contents of roughly 750,000 secret US military and diplomatic documents, passed to the organization by Private Bradley Manning who had obtained the material while serving with US forces in Iraq. Significantly, WikiLeaks sought and gained assistance in this endeavour from five leading international newspapers. The resulting disclosures, which led to calls for Assange to be arrested and charged under the US Espionage Act, included extensive records of large-scale civilian casualties at the hands of American forces. The drama surrounding the leaks reached its peak during “Cablegate”, when Assange decided to release the remaining bulk of nearly 250,000 US diplomatic cables directly on WikiLeaks.org , for fear that the encrypted cache of documents was about to be compromised.

While WikiLeaks’ prominence in the media faded for a time after Cablegate, the group did not remain idle. In 2013, it came to the defence of Edward Snowden when the former National Security Agency (NSA) officer leaked details of the massive US state surveillance programme known as PRISM. It also continued to leak information from a variety of sources, including proceedings from the pending global free trade agreement known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP ). WikiLeaks returned fully to the limelight with its phased release of emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), during the eventful run-up to the US federal election of 2016. The leaked emails, which suggested a concerted effort within the DNC to marginalize the popular candidate Bernie Sanders, in turn triggered a cascade of conspiracy theories, countertheories and accusations of “fake news ” advanced by political players and media pundits across the political spectrum. Inevitably, WikiLeaks itself came under fire, particularly from Democrats. The group was again accused of endangering national security, this time for allegedly colluding with Russia to subvert the US election process to the benefit of the Trump campaign.

WikiLeaks’ abiding commitment to the ideals of “information freedom” and “radical transparency” continues to earn the organization the wrath of a growing collection of governments, financial institutions and corporations, even as it has spawned imitators. And the incidents referred to above suggest that debates about the group’s enduring social and political significance are set to continue for many years to come. So far, thesubstance of these debates has ranged from legal and normative considerations to questions regarding WikiLeaks’ character, novelty and effectiveness. To what extent are WikiLeaks’ activities like or unlike those of other groups and individuals engaged in leaking information? Are Assange and company guilty of treason or should they instead be viewed as heroic champions of free speech? What challenges does WikiLeaks pose to increasingly distrusted mainstream news outlets? Insofar as any or all such lines of inquiry hold interest for social scientists it is often due to a larger underlying concern, namely, does the new form of activism WikiLeaks embodies represent a truly effective and expanding form of counterpower?

It was the development of a digitally enabled and highly interconnected global media environment that allowed for the type of activism WikiLeaks pioneered. At its most basic, WikiLeaks serves as an electronic drop-box for anonymous whistle-blowers wishing to pass along sensitive information. Its initial membership consisted largely of former hackers well versed in the art of encrypting and storing such information. Unlike the case for most activist groups, it is the skilled use of media technologies per se, as opposed to grassroots mobilization, which provides WikiLeaks with its chief means for challenging the status quo. By disclosing information jealously guarded by state institutions, banks, businesses or other powerful actors—but deemed by WikiLeaks’ membership to belong within the public domain—the organization hopes to create an open media environment marked by radical transparency. In Assange’s view, those institutions that prove able to adapt to this new situation will necessarily become more accountable and democratic in the process. Those unwilling or unable to do so will become increasingly rigid and secretive, ultimately undermining their legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry.

The efficacy of the “WikiLeaks paradigm”, namely, the organization’s stated mission as a whistle-blower platform and its corresponding mode of activism, is considered here through reference to the trajectory of its overall career. Rather than focusing on the group’s roots in hacktivist subculture or its internal politics, emphasis is placed instead on WikiLeaks’ evolving tactics and strategies, particularly with respect to the major leaks and related political fallout referred to above. The objective is to identify the most important factors affecting WikiLeaks’ mixed record of successes and failures in winning grassroots’ support, steering public opinion, provoking political protest and influencing mainstream and alternative media discourse. It is only through mutual appraisal of the group’s specific goals and attributes on the one hand, and the shifting and often confusing contexts in which it operates on the other, that both WikiLeaks’ limitations as a journalistic enterprise and its unique but contingent ability to catalyse political change may be fully appreciated.

The larger argument of this book is that WikiLeaks’ capacity to operate as an agent of social/political change in the US, while initially negligible, has increased over time and in a way that the group’s opponents will find difficult to reverse. The factors at work in this regard are varied and include the changing nature of WikiLeaks’ tactics and strategies, the vicissitudes of establishment politics in America and the increasing use of the organization’s resources by a variety of grassroots “agitators” and/or niche media outlets. Critical as well is the influence of larger global and economic trends. It is important to consider how these work upon and interact with the factors listed above, and how they influence WikiLeaks’ commitment to exposing wrongdoing at the systemic level and not merely within any one economic or political institution. Over the course of its career WikiLeaks has proven increasingly adept at negotiating a political and media landscape marked by growing distrust of dominant institutions, the proliferation of “truth markets” and alternative and mainstream expressions of conspiracy theorizing.

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 focus attention primarily on the challenges posed to WikiLeaks whenever it attempts to educate the public concerning information ostensibly withheld from it by powerful interests, but which arguably has a direct bearing on the well-being of ordinary citizens. Here, I contend that the obstacles confronting activist groups wishing to communicate with mass audiences today are at least as formidable as those that existed prior to the development of the World Wide Web. The web is frequently cited as a boon to social movements and other non-institutionalized political actors. Through an analysis of events surrounding Cablegate, and consideration of WikiLeaks’ ambivalent relationship to mainstream news outlets, I demonstrate that the contemporary hybrid, that is, mass and new media environment, exacerbates and compounds many of the barriers to effective communication faced by those who challenged the political status quo during an earlier phase of capitalism. This reality holds profound implications for an organization dedicated to a purely informational mode of activism.

Chapters 5 and 6 address WikiLeaks’ place within the American political and media landscape from a rather different angle. Here I maintain that WikiLeaks’ ability to influence public opinion, and by extension the agendas of various grassroots activists and established political players, is greater than might at first appear to be the case. Many of the factors that worked against the group early on, including a heavy reliance on legacy news media and a lack of strong roots in American civil society, appear to have benefitted WikiLeaks over the longer term. The central argument of these chapters is that WikiLeaks has both contributed to and benefited from a crisis of legitimacy on the part of the US political establishment, itself tied to a global crisis of the nation state. WikiLeaks’ ability to affect mainstream political and media discourse was clearly demonstrated following its disclosure of the DNC emails during the run-up to the federal election of 2016. However, the activist platform’s potential to facilitate dissent is more deeply rooted in the broader crisis referred to above and in the organization’s related capacity to tap into fears and issues of concern to a broad cross section of the public.

The chapters of this book may be read as independent analyses of various episodes in WikiLeaks’ career. They take on greater significance, however, when considered together. As indicated above, WikiLeaks’ evolving strategies have been shaped by larger economic and political trends. Hence, while the chapters draw on a range of theoretical perspectives pertaining to the specific issues at hand, the book is also informed by several overarching theoretical and substantive concerns. A sustained effort is made to situate WikiLeaks’ activities within the broad context of what Manual Castells (1996) terms the global network society, and within what Jayson Harsin (2015) identifies as a neoliberal “regime of post-truth”. Relevant ideas corresponding to both frameworks, along with the complementary ideas of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: WikiLeaks as a New Form of Activism
• 2. Information Abundance and Media Credibility in a Fragmented Public Sphere
• 3. Lessons from Collateral Murder
• 4. The Non-revelations of Cablegate
• 5. Emerging Affinities: WikiLeaks in the Context of a Legitimation Crisis
• 6. WikiLeaks’ American Moment: The DNC Emails, Russiagate and Beyond
• Back Matter