Expanding surveillance in the name of national security

Abstract: This thesis investigates the Finnish government’s and its agents’ discursive justifications for the recently proposed civil and military intelligence legislation. In order to analyse the Finnish governmental agents’ discursive practices, this thesis engages with two additional questions; how are threats to Finnish security constructed in media, and how is the concept of exceptionalism constructed in media. The analysis employs the Finnish government’s Ministries of Interior and Defence’s proposals for the new intelligence legislation, as well as written news articles by the Helsingin Sanomat subscription newspaper and radio broadcasts by the Finnish Broadcasting Company. This thesis’ theoretical framework is predominantly based on the Copenhagen School’s Securitization Theory. The methodological framework is based on poststructuralist discourse analysis. The core argument of this thesis is that the Finnish government and its agents have justified the proposed intelligence legislation by discursively constructing threats to Finnish security. Furthermore, the findings of this study indicate that the threats named by the Finnish governmental agents have been discursively framed as exceptional.