Snowdeni skandaali kujutamine eesti meedias: hirmu ja ohtude konstrueerimine
Reflecting on the Snowden scandal in Estonian media: the construction of threats and fear

Summary/Abstract: This study concentrates on the discourse of e-Estonia, which is one of the most significant cornerstones of contemporary Estonian identity. The discourse of e-Estonia is articulated in Estonian official selfdescriptions, but it also has an important role in the self-understanding of various peripheral spheres. The aim of this article is to explain how the leakages concerning details of the top secret United States government mass surveillance program PRISM were contextualised in various dimensions of the Estonian public informational sphere and how it was related to techno-optimistic identity-discourse. The analysis indicates that the reflection of Snowden’s leaks is dominated by a discourse of fear which connects PRISM to instant threats but also to more abstract dangers. I outline three dominant subtypes of that discourse: (1) Phobophobia – the fear of fear, (2) the fear that surveillance technology may directly cause harm to a) global democracy and/or b) the human rights of individual citizens, and (3) the fear that PRISM is a sign of NWO conspiracy. PRISM’s reception demonstrates that in many aspects, the techno-utopian sphere of meaning is inverted and replaced with a dystopian one. Perceiving the significance of the social impacts of information and communication technologies remains relatively constant in both cases, but the positive charge of meaning is transformed into a negative one. For example, the important keywords of the e-success story (e.g., NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre, e-healthcare system, paper-free bureaucracy) start to signify hidden danger. The constituent topics of the discourse of e-democracy (e.g., horizontal power-relations, freedom of expression and transparent governing) are, in many cases, replaced with the images that are familiar from the description of totalitarian regimes or NWO conspiracy theories.

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