Includes bibliographical references (p. [165]-189) and index.

1.What was new about WikiLeaks? -- 1.1.The creation of WikiLeaks -- 1.2.The challenge of WikiLeaks to alternative journalism -- 1.3.The challenge of WikiLeaks to mainstream media journalism -- 1.4.The challenge of WikiLeaks to power -- 2.The greatest story ever told? The Afghan war logs, Iraq war logs and the Embassy cables -- 2.1.Introduction -- 2.2.Collaboration and the Afghan war logs -- 2.3.The Iraq war logs: collaboration under stress -- 2.4.The cables and the legal attack -- 2.5.Rights, risks and responsibilities -- 2.6.The responsibility of journalism to avoid harm -- 2.7.Responsibility to tell the truth -- 2.8.Responsibility to hold power to account -- 2.9.Conclusion -- 3.WikiLeaks and the future of journalism -- 3.1.Introduction -- 3.2.WikiLeaks as part of the battle for the open Net -- 3.3.WikiLeaks as a model -- 3.4.Hacktavism redux -- 3.5.Advocacy NGO journalism -- 3.6.Foundation and public journalism. -- 3.7.Mainstream whistle-blowers -- 4.Social media as disruptive journalism: media, politics and network effects -- 4.1.Transparency and the network -- 4.2.Social media as political communications: 'The Arab Spring' -- 4.3.WikiLeaks - what next? -- 4.4.Conclusion: WikiLeaks, networked journalism and power.

WikiLeaks is the most challenging journalistic phenomenon to have emerged in the digital era. It has provoked anger and enthusiasm in equal measure, from across the political and journalistic spectrum. WikiLeaks poses a series of questions to the status quo in politics, journalism and to the ways we understand political communication. It has compromised the foreign policy operations of the most powerful state in the world, broken stories comparable to great historic scoops like the Pentagon Papers, and caused the mighty international news organizations to collaborate with this tiny editorial outfit. Yet it may also be on the verge of extinction. This is the first book to examine WikiLeaks fully and critically and its place in the contemporary news environment. The authors combine inside knowledge with the latest media research and analysis to argue that the significance of Wikileaks is that it is part of the shift in the nature of news to a network system that is contestable and unstable. Welcome to Wiki World and a new age of uncertainty.