Justifying and challenging digital surveillance after the Snowden revelations: an analysis of media and political debates in Finland

Abstract

As digitalization has made possible the collection and analysis of personal data to an unprecedented extent by corporations and intelligence agencies alike, some basic expectations about privacy and the relationship between citizen and state have become compromised. The present dissertation is interested in how a new stance towards personal information is being negotiated under these changing conditions, especially after the Snowden revelations of 2013, which raised global awareness of digital surveillance and caused moral outrage. The present study focuses particularly on public discussion in Finland, where the revelations dominated the headlines at the same time as new and more permissive intelligence legislation was being planned. The data come from Finnish media coverage of the Snowden revelations and political debate on the new legislation. Theoretical insights are drawn mainly from critical discourse studies, argumentation analysis, surveillance studies, and media studies, the first two of which offer the most important methodological tools used in the thesis. The thesis specifically explores, firstly, what discourses are evoked to justify and contest surveillance in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat; secondly, what kinds of solutions are offered for improving the situation revealed by Snowden in that same coverage; and thirdly, how new surveillance measures are argued for and criticized in political documents concerning the new legislation. The results of the analyses show that in the media surveillance is legitimated predominantly with rather typical appeals to security, while opponents construct surveillance as a threat to some of the basic building blocks of democracy. Criticism of surveillance is abundant but typically remains on a rather abstract level and rarely leads to solutions for actually improving the situation. The political documents analysed likewise underline the indispensability of surveillance for security in the view of those arguing for new legislation, while opposing voices point to negative consequences on the economy and civil rights, as well as question the efficacy of surveillance. Only the question of the economy is taken up and debated to any great extent, pointing to the relevance attributed to each strand of criticism.