To better understand how metaphors are being used in coverage of surveillance, PEN (an organization that promotes literature and defends freedom of expression) embarked on a study of articles by journalists and bloggers. Over 62 days between december and february 2014, PEN combed through 133 articles by 105 different authors and over 60 news outlets, finding that 91% of the articles contain metaphors about surveillance.
The purpose of this analysis is to compare two media which inform a large part of the population, even though in different ways. In this case journalists represent information media and telefilm represent entertainment media.
TV series / playful field: as revealed by analysis, the TV series episodes mentioning “NSA” have increasingly grown (more than films) in relation to the intensification of surveillance practices after 11 septemper 2001.
Journalists / informative field: they are the main speaker in the online debate according to the results obtained through the search of five selected queries on Google.com.
1952
A secret body established in the US after World War II to gather intelligence, deal with coded communications from around the world, and safeguard US transmissions.
SOURCE
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting them. [...] Surveillance is used for intelligence gathering, the prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or object, or for the investigation of crime.
SOURCEMass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population, often carried out by governments or governmental organizations, but may also be carried out by others corporations. Conversely, mass surveillance has equally as often been criticized for violating privacy rights, limiting civil and political rights and freedoms, and being illegal under some legal or constitutional systems.
SOURCE WikipediaTV series portray NSA as NSA wants to appear.
The National Security Agency declares that they will protect national security interests by adhering to the highest standards of behavior.
NSA WebsiteIn TV series NSA is devoted to provide valuable intelligence on issues of concern to all Americans, such as:
24 - Day 2, 1p.m.-2p.m.
00:26:52
Criminal Minds - Roadkill
00:03:49
24 - Day 2, 8a.m.-9a.m.
00:27:23
NCIS - Dead Reckoning
00:08:11
After 9/11 the number of TV series episodes quoting NSA has massively increased.
NSA is mostly represented as a security agency rather than a surveillance organization.
EXPLORING DATA - Data represent how many times "NSA" is mentioned along with "Security" or "Surveillance" in the same speech. Dataset is based on 153 analyzed TV series (603 episodes).
Thanks to the Edward Snowden’s disclosures, NSA surveillance programs became a hot topic and the debate started to grow increasingly.
Barack Obama, 2013
Edward Snowden, 2013
The analysis shows that journalists are the protagonists of the online debate.
EXPLORING DATA - The graph shows the percentage of speakers emerged from Google results analysis concerning mass surveillance.
Most of the journalists write about the NSA and its practices in a negative way.
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Headlines immediately provide the opinion journalists have on NSA: a dramatic, hostile and distopic vision.
ABOUT DATA - The visualization is based on the analysis of the titles of the articles against mass surveillance. The main elements of the sentences have been extracted and recombined to highlight the variations used by journalists to discredit mass surveillance and NSA.
Sweep
Harvest
Glean
Gather
Scoop
Snag
Pluck
Swath
Trap
Orwell
Big Brother
Dystopian
Dragnet
Trawling
Tentacles
Harbor
Inundatd
Leviathan
Net
Snagging
Totalitarian
Stasi
Nazi Germany
PoliceState
Purge
Propaganda
Tyranny
War of Information
Invade
Blitz
MaginotLine
Hostages
Hemorrhaging
Implanting
Infect
Ingest
Inject
Stethoscope
Mining
Burrow
Dig
Goldmine
Scooping
If you need more information, check the report Metadata in exchange for security.
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