The construction of threats by intelligence agencies: analysing the language of official documents in Slovakia

Abstract

Intelligence agencies play a prominent role in the production of knowledge about national security threats and their evaluation. This function is not just a value-neutral technical activity, but a social and political action. The purpose of this article is to explore the ways in which the Slovak Information Service, an intelligence agency responsible for the protection of national security, discursively constructs security threats and assigns enemy images to specific actors. The analysis was conducted on the publicly available parts of the agency’s Annual Reports. It utilised qualitative document analysis, supplemented by quantitative analysis of the frequency of use of specific keywords. The analysis, which identified the main threats connected to internal security, is constructed in a manner which connects terrorism with migration and the Muslim faith, assigning terror identities to specific groups. The agency’s constructions of internal threats were also utilised in the political discourse. Moreover, securitisation rhetoric was used in connection to the movements promoting human rights and fighting fascism, labelling them as left-wing extremists. In the field of foreign threats, their construction depends on both international developments and domestic political dynamics.