Wikileads

Community Profile

Part One: The Wikileads community, and the potential Wikileads community

So far the only true Wikileaks community on the Internet exists at Wikileaks.org. The whistleblowers, reporters and writers who maintain that site also compose the site’s community.

However, many people are interested in the Wikileaks project and would likely be interested in keeping up with the latest news. To figure out who these people are and where they gather, I reviewed the comments posted so far at Wikileads.net, analyzed Wikileads.net’s incoming traffic and looked at other sites that have posted content related to Wikileaks.

Four major categories of Wikileaks readers stand out:

People who distrust big, secretive organizations

Activists, whistle blowers, Scientology haters, liberal idealists and others who want to make the bad men stop have taken an interest in Wikileaks and, sometimes, Wikileads. The evidence:

• Wikileads’ most-read post so far, about Wikileaks, the Church of Scientology’s Operating Thetan documents and the Streisand Effect, was linked to in an anti-Scientology forum at the anti-Scientology website Enturbulation.org. That one link resulted in 56 visits to Wikileads.
• Wikileaks is a hot topic in human-rights activist circles. —find examples—. Activist journalists discuss the site’s leaks and praise the virtues of its fight against secrecy. In April, Wikileaks won an award from the Index on Censorship, a group devoted to fighting censorship. Other anti-censorship, anti-secrecy groups would also be interested in Wikileaks issues.
• Internet-freedom activists love Wikileaks, too. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU filed briefs in Wikileaks’ case against Bank Julius Baer have all gotten involved.

Journalists and techies (a.k.a. the hyper-connected)

Mainstream journalists — especially technology writers — write articles about Wikileaks and the documents it posts somewhat regularly. This is especially true after high-profile leaks are released and after Wikileaks receives (and publishes) angry letters from lawyers. And when Wikileaks got sued. And when Wikileaks got shut down.

The New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Guardian, the BBC and the Chicago Tribune have all examined Wikileaks. So have lots of techies who aren’t journalists. Wikileaks is a popular topic at nerd news site Slashdot.org, and it is also fodder for discussion on popular tech blog Ars Technica.

This crowd seems particularly interested in Wikileaks’ technological and legal implications. The Wikileaks team scoffs at many legal restraints, the site is difficult to pin to a single jurisdiction and many Wikileaks insiders remain anonymous. At some point, some government or group of governments might have to decide what to do about Wikileaks. When they do, the techie-journos world will be watching.

Insiders

People involved in the Wikileaks project are aware of Wikileads and some may read it on a regular basis. Wikileads could provide insiders with an outsider’s take on the project. What do other commentators have to say about the most recent leak? What attracts more attention: a Scientology document or a letter from a Church of Scientology lawyer? What kinds of leaks do people care about most? Wikileads could offer a fresh perspective on these and other issues.

The world

Although 66 percent of visits to Wikileads were from the U.S., people from 37 countries and every continent except Antarctica have visited this site.

Of all visits to Wikileads.net, 25 percent have come from Europe. About one-third of those were from France, one-quarter were from England and the rest were scattered around the continent.

Wikileaks is international in scope — in the past three months, released documents have exposed sketchy behavior in places as diverse as Zimbabwe, South Korea, Colombia and the U.S. So it makes sense that people in those and other countries would take a look at Wikileads.

Part Two: Where do Wikileads readers get their news, and how does this community communicate?

Wikileads readers get their news from a variety of sources, including mainstream media, tech blogs, social-issues blogs, forums and social bookmarking sites such as Digg. Wikileaks caters to the interests of the hyper-connected: The site takes advantage of all the anonymity, security and legal amorphousness the Internet has to offer. Potential Wikileads readers are likely very active on the Internet.

Also, Wikileaks material is quite often buzz-worthy — it’s perfect for mainstream blogs such as Gawker and the Huffington Post. Lots of people find Scientology amusing, and sniffing out political corruption never grows old. In short, everyone loves a scandal, and Wikileaks has plenty of them.

Last but not least, Wikileads readers get their news from Wikileaks. They read the documents, participate in the forums, subscribe to the listserv and maybe blog about Wikileaks on their personal blogs.

Read more:
Wikileads 2.0: The Plan
Wikileads 2.0: Overview