A Qualitative Analysis of Professional Journalists’ Commentary About Wikileaks
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: JOURNALISTS OR CYBER-ANARCHISTS? A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS’ COMMENTARY ABOUT WIKILEAKS Jessica Roberts, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation directed by: Professor Linda Steiner College of Journalism New media for sharing information online have presented a challenge to professional journalism in a variety of ways, as new tools or media for communicating information allow more of the public to share information in a publicly available way. WikiLeaks, an online site that began publishing secret and classified information in 2007, provides a useful lens through which to examine professional journalists’ responses to one such challenge. In responding to these challenges, journalists may engage in paradigm repair, making efforts to reinforce and police their professional norms and practices by identifying and normalizing violations. This study examines the terms and the frames used in commentary about WikiLeaks by professional journalists, in an attempt to understand how professional journalists define and defend their own profession through their efforts at paradigm repair, and to consider the professional, social, and political consequences of those efforts. Journalists primarily framed WikiLeaks as a non- journalist actor, one that threatened the national security of the United States. This framing can be seen as paradigm repair, as journalists excluded WikiLeaks from their profession on the basis of its lack of editorial structure, physical location, and concern for U.S. public interest. The consequences of this exclusion are to leave WikiLeaks and other non-traditional journalistic actors more vulnerable, and to make it more difficult for professional journalists to stay relevant and adopt improved practices in the changing media ecology. JOURNALISTS OR CYBER-ANARCHISTS? A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS’ COMMENTARY ABOUT WIKILEAKS by Jessica Roberts Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Advisory Committee: Professor Linda Steiner, Chair Professor Ron Yaros Professor Kalyani Chadha Professor Susan Moeller Professor Karol Soltan ©Copyright by Jessica Roberts 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Chapter 1: Introduction: The significance of what journalists say about WikiLeaks, and how they say it...............................................................................1 2. Chapter 2: Literature Review.................................................................................22 3. Chapter 3: Methods................................................................................................71 4. Chapter 4: A Brief History of WikiLeaks..............................................................87 5. Chapter 5: Analysis of Terms: The language journalists used in discussing WikiLeaks............................................................................................................114 Describing WikiLeaks..........................................................................................116 Describing the activities of WikiLeaks................................................................125 Julian Assange......................................................................................................128 Discussion............................................................................................................133 6. Chapter 6: Framing Analysis: The context of journalists’ commentary about WikiLeaks............................................................................................................135 Framing the issue.................................................................................................137 Solutions offered..................................................................................................161 Episodic versus thematic framing........................................................................165 Discussion............................................................................................................168 7. Chapter 7: Conclusion: The future of professional journalism............................172 8. References............................................................................................................195 ii CHAPTER 1. Introduction: The significance of what journalists say about WikiLeaks, and how they say it WikiLeaks is a non-profit organization that collects and disseminates private, secret and classified information that has been submitted by anonymous sources through a secure site. Part whistle-blower, part wiki and part publisher, its activities defy the established editorial and business models for mass communication of information and, like so many online information- sharing sites, have had repercussions for journalism, and incited many journalism professionals to comment on, criticize, or commend the organization. WikiLeaks’ activities challenge the ideology espoused by professional journalists by providing a different model for satisfying the information needs of a democratic public. As Coddington (2012) put it, WikiLeaks “stands at the forefront of an emerging iteration of the Fourth Estate marked by increased advocacy, networked collaboration, and aggregation as a means of processing information” (p. 378). Its activities raise provocative questions about how information is shared and by whom, and what role professional journalists will play in the world of new media. Most importantly, the commentary and editorials by journalists in response to WikiLeaks provide a lens through which to examine how journalists define their profession, and their ability to adapt to a changing role in the emerging media ecology. In 2010, WikiLeaks provoked extraordinary controversy, particularly in the United States, when it made public on its website hundreds of thousands of confidential documents, including U.S. military dispatches from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, generally believed to have been obtained from Private Bradley Manning. Manning was an Army private working as an intelligence analyst near Baghdad during the war. U.S. government prosecutors said Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents to which he had access through his work. The content of the documents, which 1 provided insight into U.S. operations overseas, including torture and the maintenance of foreign relations, were the subject of dozens of news stories by professional journalists (although I think the labels and distinctions among journalists and citizen journalists and others are not useful and may even be confusing, for the purposes of clarity, throughout this dissertation I will refer to professional journalists as “journalists,” and refer to other kinds of journalists using modifiers). However, the release of the documents, the organization that had put them online, and the individuals associated with that organization were just as much a story as the classified or secret information they revealed. Journalists shared their opinion through commentary and editorials, and in special notes accompanying the news articles published about the information in the documents. Analyzing how professional journalists responded to the confidential documents published by WikiLeaks, how they framed their attack or defense of the release of various documents, and what terms they used in describing the organization, whether invoking or denying the title of “journalist,” including as citizen journalist, can provide insight into how professional journalists define themselves and others, in response to challenges from non- traditional sources of information and what the status of journalist means to those who claim it as a profession or simply an occupation. Paradigm repair theory suggests that journalists rely on a particular professional ideology and they respond to challenges to that ideology. Researchers have identified many ways that professionals can respond to real or perceived threats to their paradigm, including by efforts to identify and discredit anomalous entities or behavior, either by drawing boundaries that exclude the anomalies, or by reaffirming the tenets of their professional ideology and condemning the violator of that ideology. Journalists’ response to WikiLeaks reveals how, in this major, extraordinary case, they attempted to define the boundaries of their 2 profession and the characteristics of their ideology, whether they set themselves apart from or align themselves with new media organizations and what place they establish for themselves in the world of information-sharing, underscoring the negative effect of their response on new media organizations and their own relevance. WikiLeaks’ activities in 2010 provoked sufficient response to make a study of that response worthwhile, although my analysis is not limited to that specific critical moment, and instead goes on to discuss the larger implications of the response for the freedom to share information online and the quality of information shared online, as well as the continuing relevance of professional journalists. The case of WikiLeaks may be one the first of its kind to attract this much attention from journalists, but it certainly will not be the last. The WikiLeaks website was registered and went live in 2006, officially launching in 2007 as a typical wiki site open to edits by users.