Friday, 17 August 2012

wikileaks : new networked journalism

WikiLeaks is the greatest challenge to journalism in the digital era. That might sound overblown, especially when a lot of people are very keen to move on and leave it behind. Diplomats who previously denounced WikiLeaks as a weapon of terror that threatened western democracy now claim it has had no impact. Journalists who rushed to publish the leaked "war logs" and cables now dismiss it as a one-off freakshow, and feel reassured that their familiar and comforting brands have not been usurped. ("Assange is mad, you know", they say, as if the editors and press barons who have paraded before Lord Leveson’sphone-hacking inquiry in London have come across as entirely normal human beings...).


So WikiLeaks in combination with its mainstream partners achieved a new kind of networked journalism. It was able to exploit the scale, reach and immunity afforded by the network of the internet. It was also able to tap into the mainstream-media networks of organisations such as the New York Times with all their links into a mass audience, but also their connections with networks of powerful and influential people. As a publisher of last resort WikiLeaks was a marginal wholesaler of revelation. By collaboration with the GuardianDer Spiegel and the others it became editorially powerful, feeding into some outstanding journalism that has helped inform understanding of the way that military and diplomatic power works.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/charlie-beckett/wikileaks-and-network-era-news

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