Julian Assange Wikileaks

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to determine the effect and impact of journalism in public sphere and vise versa, and how they have shaped each other due to the rapid growth and expansion of social media and technology. I have done this by researching and relying on past studies and theories; but also relating them to present events to verify such sources. I believe this topic is extremely important because is something that shapes and distinguishes us as citizens and the power we now have and how has it increased throughout history. After scrupulous research I concluded that journalism has shaped the way citizens react through manipulation of news. On the other hand, public sphere has shaped journalism, news and the way they are published by creating Citizen Journalism through digital content, and social media.

Key words:

Public sphere, Journalism, digital content, citizen journalism, digital divide.

Is Journalism and Digital Content, shaping or being shaped by Public Sphere?

Throughout this paper I want to learn if in today’s world we have a more or less corrupt society in relation to the type of journalism we have, and if the technological advances have empowered people or have undermined their influence in the world. I want to learn how media and journalism have shaped one another and in what way the public has manipulated journalism using media as the means.

Moreover, there are several problems I will address and all of them will relate them to a trending cite and person that has been in the news since 2006: Wikileaks and Julian Assange. I will do this because there are several problems that people have when an activist like Assange uses media and digital content to reveal private information. Many call it journalism and other denounce him as an anarchist, agitator and arrogant.

Throughout out this paper, I will examine how journalism and digital content has helped to shape the public sphere and how the public sphere has shaped journalism and digital content.

There are enormous amounts of studies in relation to journalism, digital content and public sphere, however I want to emphasize how this three factors interact with each other nowadays and how have they shaped and transformed. Furthermore, I believe that the study of the Wikileaks case will bring a lot of information towards this analysis as all of this factors participate and has been one of the greatest examples for showing how throughout the years the increasing availability for accessing media has empowered citizens and hence shaping journalism or what could be called that. I do not believe that we need professional journalists to create digital content; studies have found that citizen journalism