The Unleashed Scandal

In an age of ubiquitous digital media and permanent mutual observation scandals are omnipresent. Everybody can release them, everybody can become their victim. Videos on mobile phones terminate careers, Twitter messages generate outrage, and SMS messages turn into evidence. Documents of embarrassment and public disgrace today display a novel kind of lightness and agility. They can be copied in no time, spread very quickly, resist all censorship - and in the extreme case stir up worldwide indignation. The consequence: the reputation of the powerful and the powerless, of enterprises and states, can be destroyed in record time. In order to illustrate these considerations the books describes recent case-(hi)stories, discussing public figures such as Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner, the powerful and the helpless that suddenly find themselves in a worldwide pillory.

In an age of ubiquitous digital media and permanent mutual observation scandals are omnipresent. Everybody can release them, everybody can become their victim. Videos on mobile phones terminate careers, Twitter messages generate outrage, and SMS messages turn into evidence. Documents of embarrassment and public disgrace today display a novel kind of lightness and agility. They can be copied in no time, spread very quickly, resist all censorship - and in the extreme case stir up worldwide indignation. The consequence: the reputation of the powerful and the powerless, of enterprises and states, can be destroyed in record time. In order to illustrate these considerations the books describes recent case-(hi)stories, discussing public figures such as Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner, the powerful and the helpless that suddenly find themselves in a worldwide pillory.

Howard Tumber is Professor in the Department of Journalism at City, University of London, UK. He is a founder and co-editor of Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism. He has published widely in the field of the sociology of media and journalism. Silvio Waisbord is Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, USA. He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Communication, and he has published widely about news, politics and social change.

This book presents research on mediated scandals and substantiates the understanding of such forms of scandals and their impact on societies. Additionally, it connects the study of scandals with the broader fields of political communication research, organizational communication, journalism studies, and digital communication research. The authors focus on the 21st century as an age of perpetual scandalization and on digital technologies as a catalyst in this respect. Against this backdrop, the book examines different aspects of the transformation of mediated scandals through digital communication practices. Topics covered include, but are not limited to, the scandalizing potential of new media and the requirement of modified strategies of reputation management and crisis communication in politics, the entertainment industry, and the economic system among others; a different perspective on professional journalism and scandals created through new media; technological infrastructure and digital tools allowing journalists to establish new means to investigate hard scandals, i.e., substantial financial or political wrongdoings by the economic and political elite. The book, therefore, is a must-read for researchers and scholars from different disciplines, as well as practitioners and policy-makers interested in a better understanding of the study of scandals, their impact on societies, and their catalyzation through new media.

How digital media are transforming Arab culture, literature, and politics In recent years, Arab activists have confronted authoritarian regimes both on the street and online, leaking videos and exposing atrocities, and demanding political rights. Tarek El-Ariss situates these critiques of power within a pervasive culture of scandal and leaks and shows how cultural production and political change in the contemporary Arab world are enabled by digital technology yet emerge from traditional cultural models. Focusing on a new generation of activists and authors from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, El-Ariss connects WikiLeaks to The Arabian Nights, Twitter to mystical revelation, cyberattacks to pre-Islamic tribal raids, and digital activism to the affective scene-making of Arab popular culture. He shifts the epistemological and historical frameworks from the postcolonial condition to the digital condition and shows how new media challenge the novel as the traditional vehicle for political consciousness and intellectual debate. Theorizing the rise of “the leaking subject” who reveals, contests, and writes through chaotic yet highly political means, El-Ariss investigates the digital consciousness, virality, and affective forms of knowledge that jolt and inform the public and that draw readers in to the unfolding fiction of scandal. Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals maps the changing landscape of Arab modernity, or Nahda, in the digital age and traces how concepts such as the nation, community, power, the intellectual, the author, and the novel are hacked and recoded through new modes of confrontation, circulation, and dissent.

This fascinating volume offers an overview of the most influential and notorious media scandals, from newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger's groundbreaking 1735 trial for printing and publishing false, scandalous, malicious and seditious statements to Dr. Phil McGraw's 2008 thwarted attempt to force his television cameras inside Britney Spears' hospital room, from the attempts to ban literature by the likes of D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Henry Miller, and Allen Ginsberg to the excesses of gossip mongers like Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper, Geraldo Rivera, and Matt Drudge. It delves into the tabloid press and walks through the minefields of political opinion shapers, the shouters, the muckrakers and whistleblowers. America's obsession with scandal-and the media's boundless capacity to report and sometimes even create it-did not start with O.J. Simpson, Rush Limbaugh, or Britney Spears. It was ingrained in the fabric of our nation even before Paul Revere made his famous ride. Indeed, our media's cherished right to free expression was hard-won and is now protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but it comes with responsibilities and is fraught with peril. The tension between the two forces of free expression and permissible subject matter has, throughout American history, caused media scandals-public outcries, legal proceedings, denunciations, violence and, in the case of Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel IThe Satanic Verses deaths. The early battles by the print media-newspapers, magazines, books-over censorship, book banning, book burning, obscenity, blasphemy and libel set the groundwork for even greater battles as the media expanded into radio, television and the Internet. This fascinating volume offers an overview of the most influential and notorious media scandals, from newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger's groundbreaking 1735 trial for printing and publishing false, scandalous, malicious and seditious statements to Dr. Phil McGraw's 2008 thwarted attempt to force his television cameras inside Britney Spears' hospital room, from the attempts to ban literature by the likes of D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Henry Miller, and Allen Ginsberg to the excesses of gossip mongers like Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper, Geraldo Rivera, and Matt Drudge. It delves into the tabloid press and walks through the minefields of political opinion shapers, the shouters, the muckrakers and whistleblowers. Media Scandals examines this fascinating, troubled and sometimes inspiring subject from two different perspectives. First, through its recurrent themes, which reach across all media: politics; censorship; race and religion; sex and morals. The second half of the volume then examines each industry in more detail: book publishing; newspapers and magazines; radio and television, and the Internet. Augmenting this invaluable resource is a detailed timeline to help students put the wide-ranging scandals into historical perspective, and a thorough bibliography to encourage further research.

The media today, and especially the national press, are frequently in conflict with people in the public eye, particularly politicians and celebrities, over the disclosure of private information and behaviour. Historically, journalists have argued that 'naming and shaming' serious wrong-doing and behaviour on the part of public officials is justified as being in the public interest. However, when the media spotlight is shone on perfetly legal personal behaviour, family issues and sexual orientation, and when, in particular this involves ordinary people, the question arises of whether such matters are really in the 'public interest' in any meaningful sense of the term. In this book, leading academics, commentators and journalists from a variety of different cultures consider the extent to which the media are entitled to reveal details of people's private lives, the laws and regulations which govern such relations, and whether these are still relevant in the age of social media.