The Rehabilitation of Expertise Journalism

It is often mentioned that the Internet could promote citizen participation in democratic activities. Voting or online debate allows for the development of a participatory and direct democracy, where everyone can express himself, argue and participate in the decision. The WikiLeaks affair reminds us that it is not at all in this quiet way that the Internet has a place in politics. It is, rather, in excitement and rage that the computer network manifests itself in democratic activities.

With the new numerical tools, the amateur political citizen is enrolled, rather, in a “democracy of organized distrust,” as analyzed by Pierre Rosanvallon. There he finds a floor space where he can denounce injustices and abuses. The political amateur can thus, much more easily than before, become a “whistleblower.”

The first WikiLeak revelations on Afghanistan, in July, then on Iraq in October, fit this model. Thus, an American soldier scandalized by the way the American army is conducting war in Afghanistan and Iraq transmits “denunciation revelations,” namely a copy of the documents that provided foreground evidence for the numerous civilian deaths that accompany these two conflicts. This denunciation activity did not, needless to say, wait for the Internet to appear.

We remember the Pentagon Papers, which in 1971 revealed that the U.S. army’s involvement in Vietnam was much deeper than it claimed. Still, the numeric makes this activity easier; the Internet gives it a bigger audience faster. This WikiLeaks activity is further broadened with the appearance online of the American diplomatic cables. It is still too early to talk about the specifics of these new documents, which are matter for a different agenda.

In any case, the previous operations allow us to reflect on the new relationships that are being established between the amateur and the journalist. We thoroughly celebrated the arrival of a new amateur journalist who will be brought in to replace the professional journalist. At first glance, WikiLeaks seems like the embodiment of this new form of journalism.

The Information Amateur

In reality, we are helping with a much more complex chain of cooperation between the scandalized citizen and the revelation to the public. On the one hand, WikiLeaks functions like a quasi-professional actor who verifies and selects raw information that he hopes to put online; it is also proof of a grand computer mastery by its ability to protect its information on ad-hoc sites. But, later, only the big reference newspapers, like the New York Times or Le Monde, had the competencies needed to utilize these mountains of documents.

Thus, for the Afghan warlogs, The Guardian called upon, in addition to its professional journalists, specialists of the region in addition to experts in data analysis. These last ones were thus able to establish interactive maps allowing for a summary of the situation as well as a detailed presentation. More broadly, these tools made it possible to extract information from the base of data that the journalist needed in order to do his work of writing and narrative.

Nonetheless, the amateur is not just a new supplier of information. He can participate in analysis if the new information actors give him the tools to do so. Data journalism, which specializes in the journalistic processing of large information bases, such as Owni.fr does in France, offers raw sources to the information amateur who wants to watch this or that specific aspect and authorizes he who wishes to participate in some processing or to test the data in question against his knowledge.

Thus, the amateur in the numerical age is not only at the origin of new sources of information but may also be an informed reader who comments online and reexamines certain information. Definitively, what is essential is that a gateway be established between the news producer and reader. Clearly, the citizen’s participation in the production and analysis of news is far from being the rule, which is what distinguishes the amateur from the ordinary citizen.

This presence of the amateur is nonetheless essential insofar as it democratizes the process of creation and circulation of information. Thus, citizens appear who develop a series of partial competencies and avoid the break between specialists and ordinary citizens; they constitute the base of a democratic web.