Nation branding: the impact of surveillance on a country’s reputation

Nation branding is collected efforts conducted by governments, occasionally in collaboration with private sector, local and/or international agents. This is to communicate in cooperation with local and international media providers a particular shiny image about the country in order to be perceived positively by other nations and foreign citizens, this is, with the aim of political, social, and economic prosperity as an outcome of the positive brand. This image and/or reputation of a nation can be influenced positively or negatively by communications, after all, it is often about communications and information management. While policy making is an action that governments make, in corporation with the nation in some countries, and while this process has a heavy weight in the scale of nation branding according to Simon Anholt, 2003, 2009, and 2011, the recent leaks over the past few years about some governments’ activities in terms of surveillance and privacy in the nation have been under the spotlight. More and more attention has been given to the subject, especially after Snowden’s leak of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States, since then there have been some privacy concerns related to mass surveillance in some nations including, USA, Europe, UK, China, and other countries (Lyon, 2014). The paper explores how such activity could negatively affect a nation’s reputable brand. This is by introducing mass surveillance concept and background, surveillance activities conducted by governments, and explore the given justifications of security, anti-crime, and terrorism, compare data and crime rate, and finally measure the credibility of the justification which in turn could positively or negatively influence a nation’s brand and reputation.