Secrecy regimes and Information Society

Abstract

The secret -an information deliberately withheld- has rarely been studied by communication scholars. Nevertheless, its theorical significance and practical importance has just kept growing. In the last years, the huge amount of classified documents disclosed by Wikileaks and other actors has raised the question of the limits of opacity in a digital environment. In this paper, the Cablegate scandal —the massive leak of U.S. Embassy cables— provides a reason to review the logics of secrecy from classical era to present times. At the end of the itinerary, we proceed to examine the secrecy’s modus operandi in the light of our analysis of press coverage of the aforementioned leak. The conclusions underline the need of a semiotic approach to this subject within the context of a struggle for greater political transparency.