Search

The ICIJ's release of the Panama Papers in 2016 opened up a wealth of previously private financial information on the tax avoidance, tax evasion, and wealth concealment activities of politicians, government officials, and their allies. Drawing upon prior accountability and ethics focused research, we utilize a dataset of almost 28 M tweets sent between 2016 and early 2020 to consider the microdetails and overall trajectory of this particular social accountability conversation. The study shows how the publication of previously private financial information triggered a Twitter-based social accountability conversation. It also illustrates how social accountability utterances are intra-textually constructed by the inclusion of social characters, the personal pronoun 'we,' and the use of deontic responsibility verbs. Finally, the study highlights how the tweets from this group of participants changed over the longer-term but continued to focus on social accountability topics. The provided analysis contributes to our understanding of social accountability, including how the release of previously private accounting-based financial information can trigger a grassroots social accountability conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whistleblowers and journalists are key democratic actors who are both concerned with the exposure of wrongdoing in corporations, organizations, and governments. For that reason, they often collaborate to bring incriminating information to public knowledge. In the standard account, the whistleblower initiates the contact to journalists who eventually publish the story. Based on a sample of 16 whistleblower cases, the paper shows that the reality of this relationship is more complex than the standard account suggests. The empirical material documents four different trajectories through which whistleblower information reaches the public sphere, only one of which conforms to the standard account. The paper explains the variation based on a theoretical framework, which highlights the main similarities and differences between whistleblowers and journalists. Seen from the perspective of whistleblowers the relationship is double-sided. On the one hand, engaging with the press entails considerable asymmetry and uncertainty for whistleblowers who do not always know the exact motives of journalists just as they enter the relationship from a much more precarious and unstable position. Whistleblowers are also wary of collaborating with the press because it entails a radical loss of privacy as the story breaks in the public sphere. On the other hand, interacting with the press can offer vital legitimacy, protection, and professional resources for vulnerable whistleblowers. Existing work on this core relationship in democracy is surprisingly small and undertheorized. The paper contributes to the debate by offering a theoretically and empirically grounded typology of the whistleblower-journalism nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the publication of the Panama Papers in 2016, law firms and attorneys came under the spotlight of international anti-money laundering efforts. It became clear that attorneys, protected by the attorney-client privilege, play a significant role in concealing the origin of illicit funds and the constructing of offshore company-schemes. The public outcry prompted legislators to hold these facilitators accountable and to prevent money-laundering activities by imposing reporting obligation on them, whenever there is the suspicion of a client being involved in illicit activities. Unsurprisingly, attorney and professional associations voiced considerable opposition to these legislative efforts claiming an erosion of the attorney client privilege and nothing less than an attack on the rule of law. This article examines the attorney-client privilege from a historical, empirical, and constitutional perspective. A brief analysis of the legal frameworks in Germany and Switzerland exemplifies how reporting obligations affect legal practice and what challenges exist for attorneys. Both countries are considered global hubs for money laundering activities. The legal concepts of holding attorneys accountable in the neighboring countries differ in some respects. In conclusion, it shows that the legal professions successfully managed to widely avoid a ‘responsibilization’.

With the publication of the Panama Papers in 2016, law firms and attorneys came under the spotlight of international anti-money laundering efforts. It became clear that attorneys, protected by the attorney-client privilege, play a significant role in concealing the origin of illicit funds and the constructing of offshore company-schemes. The public outcry prompted legislators to hold these facilitators accountable and to prevent money-laundering activities by imposing reporting obligation on them, whenever there is the suspicion of a client being involved in illicit activities. Unsurprisingly, attorney and professional associations voiced considerable opposition to these legislative efforts claiming an erosion of the attorney client privilege and nothing less than an attack on the rule of law. This article examines the attorney-client privilege from a historical, empirical, and constitutional perspective. A brief analysis of the legal frameworks in Germany and Switzerland exemplifies how reporting obligations affect legal practice and what challenges exist for attorneys. Both countries are considered global hubs for money laundering activities. The legal concepts of holding attorneys accountable in the neighboring countries differ in some respects. In conclusion, it shows that the legal professions successfully managed to widely avoid a 'responsibilization'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media is changing social accountability practices. The release of the Panama Papers on April 3, 2016 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) unleashed a tsunami of over 5 million tweets decrying corrupt politicians and tax-avoiding business elites, calling for policy change from governments, and demanding accountability from corporate and private tax avoiders. The current study uses 297,000+ original English-language geo-codable tweets with the hashtags #PanamaGate, #PanamaPapers, or #PanamaLeaks to examine the trajectory of Twitter-based social accountability conversations and the potential for the emergence of a longer-term social accountability user network. We propose that it is the combination of financial inscriptions and evaluative ethical utterances that incite and sustain social accountability conversations and social accountability networks. Financial inscriptions simultaneously remind audiences of both the information event that fomented the initial public reaction and the monetary magnitude of the event. Value-based ethical messaging, in turn, enunciates an ethical stance that simultaneously evaluates existing practices and emphasizes the need for accountability. It is the combining of these two types of messaging that helps to construct and sustain a normative narrative about social accountability. The results illustrate how the repetition and re-working of these two forms of messaging facilitated the construction of a normative narrative that coalesced into a social accountability network which persisted beyond the initial Panama Paper information event and which was re-activated in 2017 when the ICIJ published the Paradise Papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En la película La lavandería (2019), disponible en Netflix y basada en el escándalo de Panama Papers, se muestra la corrupción del mundo de una forma irónica y cómica, además, de poner en evidencia cómo las personas son utilizadas para alimentar cada vez más a los corruptos. Esta película trata de explicar todas las jugadas sucias o eso trata ya que se debe ver más de una vez para entender y buscar herramientas para proteger a los consumidores financieros.

Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the "democratization of tax enforcement," by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social theory implies that a rise in the expectation that many will participate in collective action can make participation in the action widely rational, giving rise to a 'self-fulfilling prophecy'. I address this classic, yet understudied, proposition by surveying participation in a demonstration that the 'Panama Papers Leak' triggered in Iceland in 2016. The demonstration was preceded by a sudden rise of large-turnout expectations, and attracted one-fifth of an urban population, allowing me to obtain event-specific, population-representative survey measures of the focal constructs (N  = 821). The findings support hypotheses about the role of large-turnout expectations in collective action. They confirm that protest support (i.e. the value placed in the goal of the collective action) both raises large-turnout expectations and moderates their effects on protest participation. In fact, large-turnout expectations were associated with participation only if individuals supported the protest. Also, the findings imply that large-protest expectations trigger interpersonal relational dynamics that further motivate participation. The study thus supports and yet qualifies the role of the self-fulfilling prophecy in collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates the mediation role of taxpayer egoism in the nexus between tax evasion intention (TEI) and its determinants. TEI is measured as a composite variable (for mediation in the PROCESS macro) and then as a latent variable (for mediation in Analysis of Moment Structure Software—AMOS). Further, the stringent assumptions of mediation analysis by Baron and Kenny (Strategic, and Statistical Considerations 51:1173–1182, 1986) are challenged via assertions by Hayes (Introduction to Mediation, Moderation and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach, The Guilford Press, 2018). The proxies for TEI are the respondents' ethical attitudes toward taxation. Determinants of tax evasion intention are grouped into perceived behavioral control, attitude and subjective norms as per theory of planned behavior (TPB) and extant literature. The detailed variables adopted from the literature include tax awareness, tax information, tax complexity, perceived power of authority, tax morals, tax fairness, and trust in government. A total of 151 responses were collected. Mediation analysis was done via bootstrapping in the PROCESS macro and through AMOS. A plethora of studies focus on determinants of tax evasion, tax compliance and their intentions. However, none combine analysis via the two tools highlighted. Further, few challenge the old way of conducting mediation analysis. The data provide statistical support for egoism's mediation in the effect of four determinants on tax evasion intention. It further confirms that many of the old preconditions for mediation are unnecessary given modern-day bootstrapping analysis. Insight into determinants of TEI and egoism have been provided. However, this study uses cross-sectional data. Future studies must use longitudinal data or experimental manipulation to infer more specific effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of tax havens is an integral phenomenon of the modern stage of the world economy development. They compete with each other on the basis of tax rates, privacy level, quality and speed of the service offered. Determining the impact of tax havens is now a rather pressing issue, deepening which has largely contributed to leakages of information, particularly the Panama Papers. However, the leaks of information from tax havens are not sufficiently covered in the research of both domestic and foreign scholars. The article is aimed at examining the impact of tax havens and the Panama Papers information leak on the world economy. The definition of tax havens and their scale in modern conditions of globalization economy is considered. In the systematization of scientific works the relatively different leaks of information from tax havens were compared and the largest of them was identified. The essence of the activities of Mossack Fonseca, the company that was the victim of the data leak, is disclosed. The dynamics of registered offshore companies within the framework of the Panama Papers leak are substantiated. With the help of a mathematical model, the authors computed a trend vector of movement of the number of companies, which are using the services of offshore zones. As a result of regression trend analysis, it was defined that the number of companies registered by Mossack Fonseca tends to grow (an average of 292 units annually). This indicates that, despite the publication of classified information, the popularity of tax havens continues to increase. The main intermediary countries, which are most popular in tax speculation, are provided. It is determined that the simplicity of formalization and registration of companies, the lack of control over subsidiaries of multinational business groups are key attributes of the activities of tax havens that contribute to their use to avoid paying income taxes and money laundering. The consequences caused by the activities of tax havens and information leaks from them have been formulated. The most important among them are: sanctions provisions and monitoring of offshore activities.

There are currently no concerted attempts to understand the role of whistleblowers in the new social and political environment created by digital ICTs. Digital ICTs drive an accelerating visibility where elites and citizens constantly acquire new tools to track, surveil, and scrutinize each other. Moreover, these technologies make possible a new kind of invisibility. Increasingly complex modes of digital data production and usage generate grey areas that seem to escape legal jurisdiction and democratic oversight. With their privileged access inside these grey areas, conscientious employees-turned-whistleblowers are likely to become key sources for the disclosure of serious wrongdoing in the coming years. The argument is empirically illustrated through three cases that represent different types of grey areas in advanced democracies: big data surveillance (Edward Snowden), tax havens (Antoine Deltour and the Panama and Paradise Papers), and digital political profiling (Christopher Wylie). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In recent history, the Panama Papers have comprised one of the largest and most influential leaks detailing information on offshore entities, company officers and financial (and legal) intermediaries, and has led to a global exposé of corruption and tax evasion. A systematic analysis of this information can provide valuable insights into the structure and properties of these entities and the relations between them. Network science can be applied as a scientific framework for understanding the structure of such relational, heterogeneous datasets at scale. In this article, we use an existing, relational version of the Panama Papers to selectively construct various networks, and then study the properties of the underlying system using well-defined analytical methods from network science, including degree properties, country assortativity analyses, connectivity and single-point network metrics like transitivity and density. We also illustrate significant structural features in these networks by conducting a triad census and exploring the networks’ core-periphery structure. Together, these results are used to show that the Panama Papers constitute a distinct class of networks that differ significantly from ordinary social and information networks. We also propose, construct and analyze ‘higher-order’ networks from the raw data, such as a ‘social’ network of officers. We confirm that some of these higher-order networks also show significant non-random deviations from expected or typical behavior, including in their degree distributions.

This article examines the relationship between nationalistic mobilisations, hidden funds and undisclosed campaign contributions, commonly known as dark money. Contextualising Brexit alongside the Icelandic economic crash of 2008 shows how nationalist mobilisation and racism can secure economic and political interests for a small minority and thus create space for what Zygmunt Bauman has called 'evasion' or 'slippage' as a primary technique of power in the present. Both the build-up to Brexit and the Icelandic economic crash were characterised by a strong national-centred rhetoric of 'us-the-nation' versus 'others' that diverted attention from massive minority interests, which had access to hidden funds. The Panama Papers showed that many of the same people celebrated in Iceland as the embodied representation of the country were simultaneously moving money into tax havens. Exposés have also revealed the way that dark money secretly funded campaigns using anti-migrant racism to facilitate the Brexiteers' longer-term interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 5 April 2016, Iceland's prime minister became the first high-profile casualty of the Panama Papers investigations published around the world two days earlier, stepping down after reports of his family's hidden offshore wealth triggered massive public protests. The resignation was widely hailed as a demonstration of the power of investigative or "accountability" reporting to activate democratic citizens and effect real-world change. This paper reconstructs the Panama Papers reporting in Iceland as an important new case study in the growing literature on the impacts of journalistic revelations. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we ask what this dramatic case tells us about how major exposés produce political outcomes, as well as how the journalists involved understood the potential impacts of their work. We show that even in what looks like a clear-cut case of the so-called "mobilization model"—where change results from the public's response to a story—more complex dynamics are at work: Reporters worked actively to maximize the impact of their work, understanding these efforts in terms of its inherent newsworthiness, and the ultimate outcome of the revelations was shaped by a cycle of interactions between media and political actors that began well before publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Panama papers implicated celebrities round the globe for money laundering, tax evasion, and financing terrorist activities, on April 4th, 2016. Event study methodology is employed by using constant mean return model to gauge investors' behavior in forty-two stock exchanges before, on and after this event day. The study is believed to be first of its kind in the context of Panama papers. Results of 't - test' revealed statistically significant abnormal returns for three days, before and after the event day in two event windows (11, and 21 days), but on different dates, owing to accumulation effect. Thirty-three stock exchanges experienced statistically significant average abnormal returns (AAR), whereas, nine stock exchanges exhibited no response. Fifteen out of thirty-three exchanges witnessed cumulative average abnormal returns (CAAR) in positive direction, immediately after the event day for both event windows substantiating the underreaction hypothesis. Ten out of fifteen countries were found listed as 'more corrupt' on the Corruption Perception Index. The investors' apathy towards corruption in these countries, however, needs further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study analyzes the offshoring network constructed from the information contained in the Panama Papers, characterizing worldwide regions and countries as well as their intra- and inter-relationships. The Panama Papers 2016 divulgence is the largest leak of offshoring and tax avoidance documentation. The document leak, with a volume content of approximately 2.6 terabytes, involves more than two hundred thousand enterprises in more than two hundred countries. From this information, the offshore connections of individuals and companies are constructed and aggregated using their countries of origin. The top offshore financial regions and countries of the network are identified, and their intra- and inter-relationship are mapped and described. We are able to identify the top countries in the offshoring network and characterize their connectivity structure, discovering the more prominent actors in the worldwide offshoring scenario and their range of influence.

We study a motive for why individuals may hide wealth in offshore entities that has received scant attention in the academic literature and the public debate: the fear of expropriation. We use the Panama Papers and data on media reporting on expropriations and property confiscations. We document that such news reports increase the probability that offshore entities are incorporated by agents from the same country in the same month. This result is robust to the use of country-year- and month-fixed effects and the exclusion of tax havens. The effect is stronger in countries with well-functioning governments. We argue that individuals start hiding their proceeds from illegal activities in offshore entities when reasonably well-intended and well-functioning governments become more serious about law enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examines the micro-linguistic details of Twitter responses to the whistleblower-initiated publication of the Panama Papers. The leaked documents contained the micro-details of tax avoidance, tax evasion, and wealth accumulation schemes used by business elites, politicians, and government bureaucrats. The public release of the documents on April 4, 2016 resulted in a groundswell of Twitter and other social media activity throughout the world, including 161,036 Spanish-language tweets in the subsequent 5-month period. The findings illustrate that the responses were polyvocal, consisting a collection of overlapping speech genres with varied thematic topics and linguistic styles, as well as differing degrees of calls for action and varying amounts of illocutionary force. The analysis also illustrates that, while the illocutionary force of tweets is somewhat associated with the adoption of a prosaic and vernacular ethical stance as well as with demands for action, these types of voicing behaviors were not present in the majority of the tweets. These results suggest that, while social media platforms are a popular site for collective forms of voicing activities, it is less certain that these collective stakeholder voices necessarily result in forceful accountability demands that spill out of the communication medium and thus serve as an impulse for positive social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: The Panama Papers scandal highlighted the scale of financial secrecy, anonymous ownership and shell companies and their role in profit shifting and tax avoidance. We show the importance of international tax planning within the structure of corporate entities owned by shareholder‐individuals through Panama Papers destinations. Purpose: To identify profit‐shifting channels and to estimate related government revenue losses to European Union Member States. Methods: Using company data from the Amadeus/Orbis database (Bureau Van Dijk, n.d.a, n.d.b), we applied micro‐data analysis to the financial statements of multinational companies (MNEs) owned by shareholder‐individuals. Two groups—one with and the other without links to Panama Papers tax havens—alongside an analysis of profit‐shifting indicators. Findings: Profit is generally shifted by moving operating revenues or costs, though the use of debt channels is also important. Also, groups linked to tax havens pay significantly less tax per unit of profit before tax, and require less operating revenue to achieve higher profits. Finally, related government revenue losses were assessed at EUR 8.67 billion. Policy implication: Our results are relevant to the European Commission's Comprehensive Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCCTB) as it aims to counter profit shifting out of the European Union (EU) into tax havens. Further, our research highlights the importance of setting up registries of ultimate beneficiary owners in EU Member States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although journalism has long been considered a profession of lone wolves, its present and future is shaped by collaborative practices of various kinds. The investigation of the Panama Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its more than 100 media partners worldwide is an impressive example of collaborative journalism across media, language and national borders. This article focuses on the impact of such cross-border journalism projects on the transnationalization of public communication in digital media environments. It addresses the question of what kind of 'networked public sphere' was created by the revelations of the Panama Papers, exemplified by the communication structures that evolved on the networking platform Twitter. Digital media such as Twitter have the potential to constitute more grounded public spheres than traditional media and to foster interconnections between different publics across national and language barriers. We trace whether or not the transnational collaborative Panama Papers investigation paved the way for a networked public sphere characterized by (1) transnational attention to the issue and (2) transnational interconnections through Twitter users interacting across country and language boundaries and thereby contributing to global public communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Exposing learners to cognitive computing concepts involves new learning strategies. Because cognitive computing is probabilistic, using massive sets of data is fundamental in understanding these concepts. One data set is the release of the Offshore Panama Papers Leaks Database (LeaksDB) in May 2016, in which researchers were able to access this graph database as part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Offshore Leaks investigation and to draw conclusions about companies, trusts, foundations, and funds incorporated in 21 tax havens. For the purpose of this research, GraphDB Server was installed and configured by faculty members from a mid-western university. In addition, DBPedia and GeoNames repositories were linked to LeaksDB, leading to the discovery of interesting patterns about these Geo facade relationships between Officers (persons or companies) and Countries. Highlights • Using massive data sets is fundamental to teaching cognitive computing concepts. • Repositories linked to Panama Papers LeaksDB uncovered patterns of relationships. • Top 20 countries are related to 80% of entities listed in the LeaksDB database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial network of international corporate connections filtered in the so-called Panama papers has been analysed for the whole of Europe. This has allowed us to know the spatial morphology of the financial structure of capital evasion from Europe to tax havens around the world. It also makes it possible to map financial capital flows in Europe, identifying their points of origin, transit and destination. The result reveals the existence of different financial spaces within the continent, as well as territories outside Europe that are under the geopolitical control of the EU, and which constitute critical nodes as the final destination of capital. The most important by far belongs to the remains of the English colonial empire. It is a space used by the United Kingdom to establish a global financial network with its epicentre in the City and its final destination in the British Virgin Islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract While studies have paid attention to the activities of firms and their financial flows in offshore tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions, there is scant work on role of advanced business services (ABS) intermediary providers in shaping the geography of these jurisdictions. Yet such a study is needed in light of the recent release of the Panama Papers and the fallout of major political figures, celebrities and corporations as a result of the leaks. This paper examines the role of relational ties in mediating and linking high net worth individuals, political elites, corporations, intermediary providers, and, secrecy jurisdictions. By examining the major organizational hubs of social power embedded in network structures, it suggests that regulatory responses to tax avoidance and evasion associated with secrecy jurisdictions may need to move beyond a state-centered model of governance. Transnational governance involves a broader set of auspices and governors that include ABS actors and their social practices which constitute both a source of learning and normative regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study has investigated the role of news channels in portraying Panama Papers in Pakistan. More specifically, it has examined the public perceptions towards coverage of Panama Papers by Pakistani TV channels. A sample size of 400 respondents was drawn from political science, media and communication students, who watch TV channels for collection of data through a questionnaire. Findings revealed that Panama Papers is the most debated topic in Pakistani media. The results showed that Pakistan media has mainly concentrated on the former Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and his family while reporting Panama issue. Findings also revealed that Pakistani media has been successful in changing the mindset of the people on this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay serves as the introduction to the special issue titled, ‘The social life of corruption in Latin America’. The six authors featured in this special issue of Culture, Theory and Critique exhibit a range of scholarship around questions of corruption and anti-corruption in the region. All have been involved in long-term ethnographically based research projects in particular locations in Latin America, including Brazil (three contributions), Peru (one contribution), Colombia (one contribution) and Ecuador (one contribution). In this special issue, these engaged regional scholars turn their attention to the theme of corruption in ‘parts known’, that is, within sites where they have already established deep connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political economy for watchdog reporting is deeply challenging, yet exposing abuses of public trust had renewed focus in 2016. "Spotlight"--a Boston Globe investigation into Catholic Church sex abuse--inspired an Oscar-winning film. Two months later, 300 International Consortium for Investigative Journalism members broke the global story of tax evasion with the Panama Papers. These represent exemplar moments for watchdog journalism in a "post-truth" age characterised by fake news. They illustrate a shift in investigative reporting practice: from an "old model" of a highly competitive single newsroom environment--like the "Spotlight" team--to a "new model" of multiple newsrooms (and countries) sharing information to expose wrongdoing on a global scale, like the Panama Papers. This paper applies mixed methods to analyse the development and consequences of this new model of collaborative investigative journalism. It examines 30 years of national media awards in Britain, the United States and Australia to identify when award-winning newsroom collaborations began, their key story targets and outcomes. These findings are triangulated with interviews with investigative journalists. The findings theoretically and empirically add to emerging scholarship examining how digital media technologies--held responsible for the "journalism crisis"--paradoxically offer opportunities for evidence-based journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Index.Comunicación is the property of Index.comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Much has been written about the potential of large-scale digital disclosures, or ‘megaleaks’, to transform journalistic coverage of high-value news. This analysis takes a second look at the phenomenon by analyzing three of the best-known megaleaks to date: those disclosed by Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and John Doe, the source of the Panama Papers. To what extent did these large-scale disclosures disrupt the media capture that distorts or limits coverage by an autonomous press? A study of circumstances surrounding these three megaleaks suggests that their main effect was encouraging a culture of collaborative work that favors independence from official sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]