Week 9 - e-democracy, man

Last week I talked about how the internet allowed for a rise in citizen journalism. This is about a rise in citizen activism.

WikiLeaks is a massive grey area when it comes to ethics. What did they want to achieve? Did they want worldwide revolt/anarchy? The New Yorker articlehighlights one of the WikiLeaks personnel as being somewhat in favour of it: “[Birgitta] Jonsdottir has been in parliament for about a year, but considers herself a poet, artist, writer, and activist. Her political views are mostly anarchist.” (2010)

And the article also mentions he’s not so gracious or mature when dealing with “prospective” enemies, not proven ones: “‘WikiLeaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than WikiLeaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats, or the Pentagon.’ In his writing online, especially on Twitter, Assange is quick to lash out at perceived enemies.”(2010)

I’m all for what WikiLeaks is doing, which is forcing society to acknowledge that there is corruption and that’s it’s not just in those third world African countries far away that we don’t have to deal with; it’s closer than we think.

While it is the a leader in bottom-up activism there are others. We should take their lead, but not their example.

I admire the work of all these people.

Khatchadourian, R. (2010) 'No Secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency' The New Yorker, June 7. [URL: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian]