“We open governments”. With this accurate declaration Wikileaks defines itself on its Twitter profile. In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. state department diplomatic cables, which state the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public sphere. The publication of these documents will spread unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities all over the world. Such activities of WikiLeaks constitute an interesting example of the promotion and enhancement of collective intelligence within the abilities of new media and they can also explain the paradigm shift proposed by Dr. Axel Bruns within the Web 2.0.
Wikileaks defines itself as a non-profit media organization dedicated to bringing important information and news to the public. Their aim is to “provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information” to their electronic drop box. It was funded by investigative journalists, human rights campaigners, technologists and the general public. In the early stages, WikiLeaks was launched as a user-editable wiki which allowed the free editing of information in the web. Corresponding to the concept of Collective Intelligence by Lévy, communication tools such as WikiLeaks enable humans to interact, share and collaborate with simplicity and speed.
Also, there seemed to be the common opinion that – once WikiLeaks published unfiltered information – the Collective Intelligence would validate it. The most socially important aim for Lévy is to create the “instruments for sharing our mental abilities in the construction of collective intellect or imagination”. However, WikiLeaks developed into a more traditional publication model with the disclosure of information only after it has verified its trustworthiness. This process occurred partly because of the criticism that many uninvolved people were exposed to danger and partly because the disclosure of confidential information created a conflict with legal systems. Although WikiLeaks has become cautious as their activities have become recognized in the society, it still builds his journalistic agenda cooperatively with the society and creates collective intelligence.
WikiLeaks has been criticized regularly for the lack of control on its publications such as the spread of a counterfeited HIV test from Apple boss Steve Jobs, which was even previously approved by the head. The non-profit organization does not attempt to sell any truth and it is aware of it; rather it supplies unfiltered data to journalists, the society and the judiciary. The collective intelligence develops at a later time in the shared interpretation of the documental evidence through a subsequent public debate.
Besides the rise of Collective Intelligence, WikiLeaks indicates also a change of the traditional relation between consumers and producers. In his book „Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage” (2008), Axel Bruns introduces a paradigm shift of cultural and societal participation and economic production in developed nations. The industrial age with its “hierarchical and centralized structures for the organization of production, distribution and market economics“ transforms towards the information age: “a networked, heterarchical environment characterized by many-to-many information flows”. According to Bruns, there is nowadays a system that allows end users also to be their own producers and distributors and that makes the conventional model of media production, distribution and consumption irrelevant. Producers take advantage of the Web 2.0 technologies such as Wikipedia, Twitter and Flickr to communicate their thoughts to a potentially massive audience.
WikiLeaks illustrates this new balance between producers and consumers. With its series of publications it pushes the boundaries of unrestricted access to information; therefore it takes power away from the powerful and hands it over to the citizen. The conflict WikiLeaks induces is who dominates the information spreading: The digital public sphere changes the established structures and power relations. By offering unrestricted dispersal of information, WikiLeaks gives people the opportunity to form an opinion by themselves. At the same time, this uninhibited flow of information depicts a serious issue for the journalism industry and governments as they lose control over the dissemination of information. According to Bruns, a clear process chain from producers through the distributors to the (end-) consumers is not a feature anymore of the media industries in the information age. Besides, power over information is not controlled anymore by a small number of media proprietors.
WikiLeaks showed its political potential when it published the “Collateral Murder” video showing gunsight footage from the Bagdad airstrike on 12 July 2007, in which Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists were killed by an Apache helicopter. The video has been viewed more than 6.5 million times on YouTube and gave the world one of the most descriptive insight of what the Iraq war looks like. This is an example of the user-led content production as the leak’s source was a number of anonymous military whistleblowers and as the global news agency Reuters was not able to get hold of the record. This shows the new power WikiLeaks has in the journalism industry. They provide people with unseen information and news agencies cannot prevent them from publishing unfavoured news.
In the future, the ability to create Collective Intelligence as well as the impact on Produsage will depend on how the correlation between WikiLeaks and the media will be formed. If they cannot be impeded by legal restrictions and if they allow the general public to influence their releases, WikiLeaks will maintain a large impact on the structure of journalism.
Axel Bruns, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage
Axel Bruns, News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for e-Journalism
Pierre Lévy, Collective Intelligence
www.twitter.com
www.wikileaks.ch
OK, but now WikiLeaks is a top-down system with strong editorial presence.
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