“Accepting the Rules of the Game”: Institutional Rhetorics in Legitimizing Surveillance

Abstract

In this contribution, we analyze a comprehensive set of rhetorical strategies used by security professionals to legitimize the implementation of advanced surveillance systems. Drawing on a set of semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts from safety and security departments of an air traffic control provider in Italy, we show that both the expressed demands for surveillance as well as the rhetorical strategies used to legitimize its enforcement are embedded in dedicated institutional frameworks. We argue that institutions both facilitate and constrain their members’ discursive actions to rationalize surveillance according to the institutions’ vested interests. This intersubjective (re-)construction of an insti- tution’s social values is an important precondition for successful speech acts of securitization, in which the acceptance of exceptional measures is called into action to deal with potential threats.