Sanna Marin and the digital scandal, by Marçal Sintes

by time news

The Prime Minister Of Finland, the very young -36 years old- Sanna Marin, reluctantly became a international celebrity. It has happened after a couple of videos were made public in which she is seen dancing uninhibitedly and a supposedly erotic photo of two of her friends kissing on the mouth in Kesäranta, the official residence of the heads of government. Anyone who wants to see the details can access the material with a couple of clicks. The matter has sparked a harsh campaign against her, that has forced her to apologize publicly, as well as -yes- to take a drug test. Her political opponents, of course, have tried, and are trying, to bring her down by taking advantage of the controversy.

The first consideration is that in none of the images -neither of Marin’s movements nor of her friends’ kiss- appears nothing criminal. Having fun and dancing, on the other hand, are activities that do not collide, contradict or come into conflict with either the speech or the proposals of the Prime Minister’s political formation (the social democratic party of Finland), nor kisses between women.

If we are guided by the journalistic canon of continental Europe, neither the videos nor the photo should have been published, because they are located strictly in the private sphere. Anglo-Saxon journalistic culture is different and has traditionally been much more lax on this point. Information about the private lives of political figures is disseminated with some regularity on the grounds that it gives clues to their personality and character. This approach was developed from the seventies along with the tendency to spectacularize politics, so common everywhere.

But I must warn you that by taking journalistic ethics as a reference to evaluate this matter, I am doing an exercise between willful and old-fashioned. Traditional media have lost exclusivity over information. Today there are many actors who provide information (whether true or false) and are outside journalism and its rules: all kinds of websites, blogs, social networks and messaging platforms. The media can no longer manage what is broadcast and what is not. Simply, now everything reaches the public and in oceanic quantities.

In addition to a cultural change and the digital revolution in communications, there is something essential and powerful that has contributed to making images viral: scandal sells. The scandal, to the extent that it is based on the transgression of a shared norm (by a group or a part of it), powerfully attracts us (remember that the normative can be the result of simple belief, prejudice or taboo). The scandalous has excited the curiosity of men and women since the dawn of time. We have always liked to poke our noses into other people’s homes, snoop around, find out what others are trying to hide. For this reason, it is not strange that images like the ones that have been known spread like wildfire and manage to get into the collective debate despite their irrelevance for public life.

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It should be added at this point, as not a few analysts have pointed out, that the fact that Marin is a woman, that she is young and that she also has power has contributed to fuel the case, and it has conditioned the way of dealing with the matter, both by the classic media, as well as by websites, blogs and social networks.

I would not like to end without us asking ourselves the million dollar question. Where did the images come from? There are only two options. Either they have been stolen -taken from an electronic device without consent- or they have been provided by someone who had them, by someone who has therefore betrayed someone’s trust. But there have been three leaks, that is, a lot of chance -if there have been three traitors- or a lot of stupidity -if it has been only one-. Which inevitably leads me to the hypothesis of theft or ‘hacking’. And not to rule out that the Russian intelligence services have something or a lot to do with the matter. Not in vain, after the invasion of Ukraine, the Government of Sanna Marin has been very vehement in calling on NATO to admit Finland as a partner as soon as possible. It would be another example of the digital war who has been using Vladimir Putin to try to destabilize other countries.

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