Wikileaks' Liquid Information Leaks for a Liquid Society

• Article: Liquid Information Leaks. By Nathan Jurgenson and PJ Rey.

URL = http://www.pjrey.net/documents/Liquid%20Information%20Leaks%2011.15.2011.pdf

Summary

"In this essay, (we will) argue that the so-called WikiLeaks global scandal can be understood through the framework developed by Zygmunt Bauman (2000) in Liquid Modernity, where he argues that Late Modernity is characterized by a trend of increasing liquidity. As an extension of this theory, we argue that as information becomes increasingly liquid, it leaks. For this reason, an environment of liquidity is hostile to entrenched, secretive institutions—the sort that WikiLeaks believes are inherently corrupt. To undermine these institutions, WikiLeaks engages in a tactic of enforced transparency, using its networks to gather up the increasing abundance of leaks and further harnessing the environment of liquidity to make these leaks highly visible. We will conclude that WikiLeak’s “cyber-anarchist” philosophy rests on a connected series of principles: increased liquidity leads to greater transparency, which, in turn, leads to better behavior by institutional actors. Both Bauman and WikiLeaks anticipate what the evidence now indicates: institutions attempting to solidify against the growing torrent of liquidity face the prospect of potentially being washed away."