The Public Life of Secrets
The Public Life of Secrets
复制标题
秘密的公共生活
DOI：
10.1177/0735275115587388
复制
发表时间：
2015
影响因子：
4.4
通讯作者：
C. Bail
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
C. Bail
尽管保密性使政策制定者能够逃避公众的监督，但机密信息的泄露揭示了国家对现实的社会建构。我提出了一个理论，解释泄密如何塑造国家为向公众传达社会问题的原因和纠正这些问题的相应解决方案而创建的话语框架。综合文化社会学、符号互动论和民族方法论，我认为，泄密使非国家行为者放大了国家公开行为和秘密行为之间的矛盾。各国的回应是“临时”制定新的框架，将它们的秘密违规行为正常化，作为其他政策议程的逻辑延伸。虽然这些融合的回应解决了泄密暴露出的矛盾，但它们逐渐将话语框架与现实分开，从而增加了国家保密的需要--以及未来泄密的可能性。我通过对2000至2008年间英国政府关于恐怖主义的论述的案例研究，来说明这种欺骗和披露的螺旋式下降。
While secrecy enables policy makers to escape public scrutiny, leaks of classified information reveal the social construction of reality by the state. I develop a theory that explains how leaks shape the discursive frames states create to communicate the causes of social problems to the public and corresponding solutions to redress them. Synthesizing cultural sociology, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology, I argue that leaks enable non–state actors to amplify contradictions between the public and secret behavior of the state. States respond by “ad hoc–ing” new frames that normalize their secret transgressions as logical extensions of other policy agendas. While these syncretic responses resolve contradictions exposed by leaks, they gradually detach discursive frames from reality and therefore increase states’ need for secrecy—as well as the probability of future leaks—in turn. I illustrate this downward spiral of deception and disclosure via a case study of the British government’s discourse about terrorism between 2000 and 2008.