Abstract
We describe a Networked Fourth Estate and update it. The concept argues for a world in which digital audiences collaborate with the media through a common network to generate and process information and make it visible. This model of journalism is based on citizen leaks and activism and international media consortia that publicize their work. It derives from previous hacker and cyberpunk initiatives which, applying cryptography, countered the dystopian drift of digital capitalism and surveillance imposed by the data industry in the service of an attention economy, and developments in activism from the Global South.
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Palgrave Macmillan
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We explain how media consortia collaboratively manage and publish content dropped by leakers into mailboxes, preserving anonymity, or work with endangered reporters. This institutional evolution, from activist groups to new business models, runs parallel to changes in the content of leakers’ and reporters’ profiles and concerns. At first, these were technologically empowered citizens who challenged war and espionage agencies from the inside (Chelsea Manning of the Pentagon, Edward Snowden from the NSA). Later leakers focused on the influence of digital corporations on electoral processes (the Cambridge Analytica [CA] case) and negative effects upon individuals and social collectives (Frances Haugen denouncing Facebook). But recent Pentagon leaks, about the presence of NATO troops in Ukraine, involved an individualistic, depoliticized leaker who lacked hacker or civic ethics and was driven by exhibitionism. A further development is occurring within the Global South, where reporters whose very existence is imperilled on a daily basis connect online with international not-for-profit organizations to publish their work. We discuss this evolution and its possible consequences.
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Sampedro, V., Miller, T., Fernández-de-Castro, P., López-Ferrández, J. (2024). An Imaginary and the Reality of a New Networked Fourth Estate. In: Sixto-García, J., Quian, A., Rodríguez-Vázquez, AI., Silva-Rodríguez, A., Soengas-Pérez, X. (eds) Journalism, Digital Media and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-63153-5_5
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