WikiLeaks: A Critical Analysis of the U.S. Government's Response to the Disclosure of the War Logs

Abstract

In the summer of 2010 the media organization WikiLeaks began a massive disclosure campaign that would come to see the publication of nearly 500,000 secret and classified documents pertaining to the United States' wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Following this series of unprecedented leaks, the U.S. Government responded to WikiLeaks by characterizing the organization as a "danger to national security." Through a discursive analysis of the U.S. Government's response to WikiLeaks during the cycle of the War Logs, this thesis attempts to describe the political implications of this aforementioned articulation, both in terms of what it may mean for WikiLeaks and other media organizations similar to it, as well as what such a characterization may indicate more generally about governing policies in an era of burgeoning transparency. The form of discourse analysis that is utilized in this thesis is primarily informed by Michel Foucault's "archeological" approach, as well as by critical rhetorical analysis.