ABSTRACT
Fifteen years ago, WikiLeaks brought to light the capacity for distributed publishing systems to use the secrecy of encryption to disclose the secrets of others. Since then, cultures of openness and secrecy and their relations to networked technologies have intertwined to redefine the work and identity of journalists. This chapter charts this rise through new forms of distributing journalism. Through historical anchoring in the cypherpunks and the presentation of a typology of crypto-cultures, it profiles the emergence of associated practices of crypto-journalism that are necessary, but not sufficient, to engage in meaningful and enduring distributed journalism. These structures must – past making information public – make public information. We argue that crypto-journalistic practices have come to institutionalize workflows of “big data” and leaks-based journalism that spread across both time and space in forms of multi-jurisdictional coordination to make the news. The models discussed show a varied evolutionary trajectory of how journalism is being redistributed as it encounters the cypherpunk cultures that enjoy distributed logics of governance and practice to solve problems, create community, and affect change. Yet at the heart of the matter is not only which facts are made public, but how they are made so. In the second half of this chapter, we turn our attention to in-depth analysis to the events of 6 January 2021 at the US capitol as a case study that shows just how far crypto-cultures and distributed logics of control are now enmeshed in journalistic practice. We conclude that the hyperreal disclosure practices seen in news around the storming of the capitol predicate novel public information-making practices. What type of public might be afforded by these practices, and how so, remains a question for an age where digital secrets and distributed disclosures are evolving cultures of journalistic and civic practice.
