The Politics of Information: Examining the Conflict Between WikiLeaks and the US Government

Abstract

In 2010 WikiLeaks released a number of secret and classified documents that contained information pertaining to the United States government. Since then, WikiLeaks and the United States government have been engaged in a rhetorical battle over the circulation of information. Using membership categorization analysis (MCA) as an analytical technique this thesis answers the following research question: what form(s) of politics are made possible as the result of the social orders produced by both WikiLeaks’ and the United States government’s public discourse on the circulation of information? After analyzing a sample of the related discourse, it became clear that the disagreement between WikiLeaks and the United States government is much greater than different views on the distribution of, and access to, information. Rather, the major issue is that the discourses produced by representatives of both organizations constitute two similar and yet somehow opposing social orders. The social orders produced result in different forms of politics and democracy. In turn, this involves each side thinking differently about transparency, the public, the government, the law, and the media.