From Outrage to Acceptance: Public Discourse in Response to the Snowden Revelations

• In Event: Posters II

Abstract

In June, 2013, The Guardian newspaper published a series of articles by journalist Glenn Greenwald in quick succession. The articles described classified documents Greenwald had received from whistleblower Edward Snowden, which revealed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its allies, with corporate acquiescence, had been engaging secretly in extensive surveillance of the online activity – email, web searches, phone calls and more – of countless millions of people from the United States and numerous other countries, and lying even to the US Congress about its pervasiveness and legality. The first six of these articles generated a flood of 15,648 online comments from Guardian readers. Our research involved a thematic analysis of a representative sample of 942 of these comments, with particular attention paid to how they changed over time as each article was published and new and ever-greater pervasiveness of the surveillance was revealed. Results showed that initial outrage at the NSA, praise for Snowden and condemnation of the ‘criminal’ US administration soon subsided and were dominated by expressions of futility, resignation and grudging acceptance.

Authors

• Amber Elizabeth Aaren Ivers, Simon Fraser University

• Ted Palys, Simon Fraser University