Eighth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

With the launch of WikiLeaks in 2006, Julian Assange significantly altered the relationships among journalism, government, and democratic citizenry. Boasting a database of over ten million documents, WikiLeaks specializes in the publication of classified or restricted materials about governmental, organizational, and corporate corruption. For his work, Assange has accumulated a multitude of awards from reputable human rights organizations and news organizations. Yet, his practices have made him one of the most wanted people in the world by major government powers. Through an unwavering campaign, government and media associations have criminalized Assange and quelled public attention to Assange’s persecution and the revelations of WikiLeaks. Operationalizing abstruction analysis, this study demonstrates how mediated messages restrict Assange’s capacity as an agent of political change. As theorized, abstructions manifest in discourse from the aggregate reactions to singular agents who expose and dissent against authoritarian power. Considered threats to the inequities of the status quo, these agents and their personal identifiers undergo three ideological processes. First, agents like Assange, endure an erasure of agency through abstraction. Referent terms then, like the name “Julian Assange,” become disconnected from their antecedent persons. The names are then rhetorically reconstructed as sites of inconsequential political ructions that distract from the substance of the agent’s dissent. As a result, these processes obstruct democratic discourse about the reasons for the initial protest. These abstructions afford institutions and agents of authoritarian power the ability to continue assaulting democratic governance. This analysis demonstrates how Assange endures the abstruction processes that reinforce authoritarian power.