Framing mass surveillance: Analyzing New Zealand’s media coverage of the early Snowden files

Abstract

This research investigates how New Zealand media framed the mass surveillance debates in the immediate months following the June 2013 Snowden revelations up to the passage of the Government Communications and Security Bureau Amendment Bill 2013. A media framing analysis of news stories from two commercial newspapers and the national public broadcaster in New Zealand (N = 156) revealed frames of lawfulness, conflict, and democratic values dominated coverage; public radio drew upon one additional frame, Edward Snowden the individual. A comparative analysis reveals the commercial newspapers’ reliance on episodic frames opposed to public media’s thematic framing, yet coverage across both samples was overwhelmingly negative. Both samples also privileged official government and foreign media sources. Together, these strategies worked to distance citizens from the surveillance debate by framing it as a political – rather than a civic – issue to be resolved by government leaders. The media’s inability to build a consensus around the surveillance debate and engage citizen voices may at least partially explain the lack of coordinated public resistance against subsequent surveillance policy reforms that effectively expanded New Zealand’s intelligence community’s spy powers.