COMS 230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 25: Whistleblower, Culture Jamming, Authoritarianism

• School: McGill University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMS 230
• Professor: Cayley Sorochan

Document Summary

Today, we"re going to be talking about whistle blowing the stakes are far greater than culture jamming. Wikileaks and online tactics of hackers can only occur with digital media. Public exposure of illegal or abusive or immoral behavior by public organizations or private corporations or individuals in the form of a release or leak of incriminating information. The stakes are high for the whistle blower, they can lose their job, they can experience lawsuits, and they can be harassed, targeted in the media. There"s a kind of shoot the messenger the whistle blower faces a higher degree of punishment than the wrongdoer. Three main channels of whistle blowing: internal. A whistle blower may go to a supervisor and may say that they see some wrong doing in the organization. However, there"s always a risk where the information might be ignored by the authority. The authority might themselves be a part of the wrongdoing: external.