Wikileaks
I majored in journalism when I was an undergraduate. Therefore, social media is not new to me. In terms of social media marketing, it is a quite new angle to perceive social media. However, my very first post is more about social media.
Wikileak is an international, online, non-profit organization which publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources. Julian Assage, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder, editor-in-chief, and director. Its website, initiated during 2006 in Iceland by the organization Sunshine Press, claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of its initiation. The group has released a number of significant documents which have become front-page news items. Early releases included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war and corruption in Kenya.
According to the WikiLeaks website, its goal is "to bring important news and information to the public... One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth." In last few years, Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world’s media combined. When asked can that possibly be true, Assange said, that the rest of the world’s media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information than the rest of the world press combined.
I want to talk a little bit more about the story in Kenya. Few years ago, the Kroll Report which was a secret intelligence report commissioned by the kenyan government after its election in 2004. Prior to 2004, Kenya was ruled by Daniel Arap Moi for about 18 years. He was a soft dictator of Kenya. When Kibaki got into power, through a coalition of forces that were trying to clean up corruption in Kenya, they commissioned this report, and spent about two million pounds on this and an associated report. And then the government sat on it and used it for political leverage on Moi who was the richest man still is the richest man in Kenya. It’s the Holy Grail of Kenyan journalism. Assange went there in 2007, and they managed to get hold of this, just prior to the election, the national election, December 28th. When they released that report, they did so three days after the new president, Kibaki, had decided to pal up with the man that he was going to clan out, Daniel Arap Moi. Word of the report leaked in to Kenya, not from the official media, but indirectly. And it Actually shifted the election. This report became front page of the Guardian and was then printed in all the surrounding countries of Kenya, in Tanzanian and South African press. So it came in from the outside. That, after a couple of days, made the kenyan press feel safe to talk about it. It ran for 20 nights straight on Kenyan TV, and shifted the vote by 10 percent, according to a Kenyan intelligence report, which change the result of the election. To some extent, this leak changed the world.
