Whistleblower as activist and exile: The case of Edward Snowden
研究了国家机构不当行为中的举报人活动，通过斯诺登案例提出“流亡举报”概念，揭示其作为激进抵抗和民主批判的新形式。
Whistleblowing is an important form of radical political activism, influencing social reform by fundamentally changing the way we see our world. This article contributes to understandings of whistleblower-activism in cases of wrongdoing on the part of state institutions. Extant theorizations of organizational whistleblowing fall short in explaining such instances. In contrast, this article develops four key dynamics of state whistleblower-activism: disclosures radically outside both organization and state, extreme dependence on supporters, democratic activism through alternative loyalties, and parrhesia revealing a crisis in Western democracy. These insights are elaborated through in-depth exploration of the exemplar case of U.S. national security whistleblower Edward Snowden. We argue that the emergent concept of “exilic whistleblowing,” inspired by Hannah Arendt’s work on exile, offers novel insights. Contributions extend understandings of whistleblowing theory and practice highlighting critical aspects of exilic whistleblowing as activist resistance: how it can be used strategically as part of activist critique aimed at changing the status quo, and how the exiled whistleblower acts as a vanguard helping to bring about a new political consciousness concerning the state of modern democracy and its capacity to uphold constitutional and international human rights.