Democratic Discrepancy In The Age of Information. WikiLeaks and the US on Information Freedom

Abstract: The ICT revolution has transformed the space for democratic debate on information freedom. Although democratic actors like the US and WikiLeaks both advocate freedom of information, there are obvious discrepancies amongst ideas of how this basic democratic freedom is implemented in the age of information. These democratic discrepancies are analyzed through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis, focusing on the case of WikiLeaks’ release ‘Cablegate’ in 2010, to the great concern of the US. The discrepancy of the US’ freedom from WikiLeaks’ publishing activity, and WikiLeaks freedom to publish, is seen through the lens of Isaiah Berlin’s concepts of positive and negative freedom. It is concluded that the logic of the network society poses the challenge of democratic states’ adaption to the network society’s dialectic between the Web and the Self, as opposed to that of structure and agent. Concurrently, the missing link between globalization and democracy, points to the transformation from interest-based to value-based motivation for political engagement. As the information age’s level of connectivity gives rise to increased clashes of discourse, the purpose of this research is to describe these and thereby clarify challenges of governing the Internet in the 21st Century.