Martiri a bassa intensità

The purpose of this article is to describe the mediatic figure of the whistleblower Edward Snowden in order to compare some of its characteris- tics with the criteria indicated by the 18th–century treatise by Prospero Lam- bertini to define Christian martyrdom. Snowden, who revealed details about surveillance programs of the US Government to the press in 2014, is generally described by the media as a hero who sacrificed his personal freedom in the name of truth and justice. Analysis will focus in particular on two of the main texts about Snowden (the docu–film Citizenfour by Laura Poitras and the bi- opic Snowden by Oliver Stone) and will show that the figure and the story of Snowden have become part of the popular culture, or, in the terms of Ortole- va (2019), a “low intensity myth”.