Haktology, trump, and news practices

Abstract

Hacked and leaked content has become a major source of information for the mainstream news, particularly in the years since Donald Trump snatched the official Republican presidential nomination in 2016. This chapter seeks to identify some salient policies and practices the news media have adopted in their coverage of the rise of Trump to power. Indeed, there is a plethora of literature on the role hackers and leakers as well as news fakers play in today's journalism (Eggen, 2006; Gunkel, 2005; Jaworski, Fitzgerald, & Morris, 2004; Lievrouw, 2011; Roberts, 2012; Son, 2002; Vegh, 2003). We even have a new theory with a set of principles designed to test, interpret, and predict the phenomenon. Called haktology, the theory examines the processes of gaining illegal and unauthorized access to information, its subsequent disclosure to reporters and activists, its transmutation into news reports, and the impact such reports leave on public opinion.