“Bullets Of Truth”: Julian Assange And The Politics Of Transparency, Mark Fenster
Dec 2018
“Bullets Of Truth”: Julian Assange And The Politics Of Transparency, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
This essay updates (to early 2019) earlier work on the WikiLeaks story in order to consider what more recent developments reveal about the theoretical promise that Assange articulated at the time of the website’s emergence. Assange has characterized secrecy as both a form and symptom of corruption, and ultimately as the foundation of a “conspiracy” of governance that states like the U.S. inflict on their subjects and the world. He advocates a non-political, vigilante form of transparency in which WikiLeaks serves as a neutral entity that will save the public and free the world with information. He predicted that corrupt …
Feed: State Transparency Amidst Informational Surplus, Mark Fenster
Dec 2018
Feed: State Transparency Amidst Informational Surplus, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
An email arrives, promising inside information about the perfidious forces that secretly rule the nation. A Twitter feed from a prominent insider at an establishment think-tank announces the latest disclosure about the president’s secret role in the Russian conspiracy to manipulate the election that elevated him with the blast of toy cannon. Meanwhile, the President’s tweets serve to annoy, distract, humor, or comfort those who see them, and they above all announce some truth about his presidency.
Debates about government transparency presume that the state controls an informational spigot, which can be made to allow information to flow or to …
Information Sharing, Transparency, And E-Governance Among County Government Offices In Southeastern Michigan, Lawrence Bosek
May 2017
Information Sharing, Transparency, And E-Governance Among County Government Offices In Southeastern Michigan, Lawrence Bosek
All NMU Master's Theses
The Internet has given rise to the availability of information at our fingertips. While the public, particularly consumers, are more commonly described as being the leading users and beneficiaries of electronic information services, businesses and governments are also players in the arena for sharing official information. Information can be easily stored on Internet websites for the public, businesses, and other governmental offices to search and peruse when needed. This study examined the ease of locating county governmental information, such as contact information for public officials and financial reports, and surveyed elected county officials for purposes of identifying how information is …
The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster
Dec 2004
The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
The normative concept of transparency, along with the open government laws that purport to create a transparent public system of governance promise the world—a democratic and accountable state above all, and a peaceful, prosperous, and efficient one as well. But transparency, in its role as the theoretical justification for a set of legal commands, frustrates all parties affected by its ambiguities and abstractions. The public’s engagement with transparency in practice yields denials of reasonable requests for essential government information, as well as government meetings that occur behind closed doors. Meanwhile, state officials bemoan the significantly impaired decision-making processes that result …
