WikiLeaks or Wikileaks was founded in as a nonprofit whistleblowing organization dedicated to publishing classified governmental and corporate documents while maintaining the anonymity of sources. The organization rose to international prominence in when it released US government video footage of a US Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed civilians and journalists.
All of these leaks were provided by a US Army solider, Chelsea Manning, who is currently serving a prison sentence after an acquaintance in a chatroom disclosed her identity to government officials. Discussion and analysis of WikiLeaks as an organization is tied closely to assessments of its polarizing leader, Julian Assange.
Fearing eventual extradition to the United States to face criminal charges for publishing classified documents, Assange has remained in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since , when he was summoned to Sweden to answer questions related to sex crimes. Academically, WikiLeaks has stimulated a number of debates in journalism. While interest in WikiLeaks has waned since , scholars argue its significance lies in part in its advancement of the idea that the journalism process can be networked or distributed across media partners and organizations.
A number of books about WikiLeaks appeared in Many of them were written by journalists who had either worked or collaborated with WikiLeaks, such as Beckett and Ball and Leigh and Harding A key theme in these works is the extent to which WikiLeaks functioned as a journalistic entity, and to what extent it needed support from traditional news organizations. Both Greenberg and McCurdy contextualize the rise and lasting impact of WikiLeaks by comparing it to past leaks, notably the Pentagon Papers.
Both works see WikiLeaks as an inevitable outgrowth of a techno-transparency movement. Finally, Christensen is useful because it explicates specific phases in the evolution of the WikiLeaks organization. Beckett, Charlie, with James Ball. WikiLeaks: News in the networked era. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Written by journalists, this book contextualizes the evolution of WikiLeaks, emphasizing its impact on the field of journalism. Christensen, Christian. A decade of WikiLeaks: So what? DOI: Defines and contextualizes three phases in the evolution of WikiLeaks, from alternative news source to media partner to media critic.
