Has WikiLeaks Become The Julian Assange Show?

While Bradley Manning faces ‘aiding the enemy’ charges, with the enemy being WikiLeaks, Julian Assange is sitting down for dinner with Lady Gaga.  At the same time a paywall put up on WikiLeaks in order to help fund court cases has been met with great hostility, especially from fellow hacktivism group Anonymous who lashed out at Mr Assange in a twitter discussion (Robles 2012).

This brings up the interesting issue of personality within activism.  What level of individuality is appropriate and what does it take for the public to become disenchanted with a good cause due to inconsistencies in the personalities running it?

If we take, for example the ‘Kony 2012’ campaign…

After releasing what became the most watched video in internet history and receiving over 20 million in donations and merchandise revenue, Invisible Children’s founder, Jason Russell had a meltdown on March 15^th in which he was detained by San Diego police.  While the public didn’t necessarily lose faith in the cause (to make Joseph Kony famous).  They did lose faith in the leaders of the movement resulting in it’s quick downward spiral.  On April 20 instead of waking to posters and stickers covering cities, the world woke to an almost embarrassed silence (Ferrier 2012). 

Similarly…

When WikiLeaks began publishing throughout 2010 and 2011 the name Julian Assange was much less known than the name WikiLeaks.  This allowed for the documents leaked to do all the talking and take centre stage.  Today though, Mr Assange has become a personality and the public opinion of him is shaping the public opinion of WikiLeaks.  These opinions spread quickly through social networks and blogs.  It’s much more fun to write about whether Mr Assange is guilty or not of charges brought against him, about his meetings with various celebrities, or his intentions to create a new political party than it is to explain the complexities and possible ramifications of various leaks.

With activists relying heavily on digital media to widely distribute their campaigns or leaks, it pays to understand how the group mentality of social media can be easily swayed.  Sports people are taught this from the moment they hire an agent and have become wary when posting to twitter or other social networks as backlash can be unrelenting.  While Julian Assange seems to have the public’s interest at heart in his use of social media to spread WikiLeaks some would argue there is too much of his own personality in the campaigns.  His personality may resonate with some, however WikiLeaks minus his intense personality seemed to resonate with most.

Beckett, C 2012, ‘Why Doesn’t Julian Assange Leave WikiLeaks?’, London School of Economics and Political Science, 24 August, viewed 21 January 2013, <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2012/08/24/why-doesnt-julian-assange-leave-wikileaks/>.

Ferrier, A 2012, ‘Kony 2012: The Biggest Social Media Experiment In History Ends In Failure - So Why Is Nobody Talking About It?’, mUmBRELLA, 23 April, viewed 21 January 2013, <http://mumbrella.com.au/kony-2012-the-biggest-social-media-experiment-in-history-ends-in-failure-so-why-is-nobody-talking-about-it-86939>.

Robles, J 2012, ‘WikiLeaks and Anonymous: Will they kiss and make up?’, The Voice Of Russia, 19 October, viewed 20 January 2013, <http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_10_19/WikiLeaks-and-Anonymous-Will-they-kiss-and-make-up/>.