TLDR: dataveillance chilling effects were measurable but very small. Open questions about meaningfulness or cumulating effects. "Salience shocks" too common? Resignation does not “protect” against chilling effects. Crit. privacy literacy may be an important driver of “rational” chilling effects.

Critical Privacy literacy (ability to criticize, question, and challenge the status quo of institutional surveillance) positively relates to self-inhibition on within-pers. level. Chilling effects may thus be a “rational” behavioral response of critically reflecting barely avoidable dataveillance.

Using Bayesian random-effects models, we find evidence that salience shocks increase self-inhibition and crit. privacy literacy. Within-person effects of perceived dataveillance on self-inhibition are pos. but probably too small to be meaningful. Resignation not associated with self-inhibition.

In a 3-wave panel study w/ 774 German Internet users, we test if making dataveillance salient to users by means of so-called “salience shocks” (articles about dataveillance) increases their a) sense of dataveillance, b) self-inhibition tendency, c) privacy cynicism, and d) critical privacy literacy.

Technology use is inherently associated with pervasive surveillance by online companies, which can lead to panoptic chilling effects. Chilling effects describe the self-inhibition of legal & legitimate behavior due to feelings of surveillance (e.g., limiting information searches or use of services).

Thank you for these praising words 🙏

Link to article 👉 doi.org/10.1093/jcmc...

In the manuscript, we discuss possible reasons for these patterns of inequality including structural disadvantages and power imbalances.

Dig. inequalities: older age relates to both less frequent beneficial and harmful experiences while higher education positively relates to having beneficial experiences. Older age also positively relates to mistrust and self-inhibition. Women are more likely to engage in self-inhibition than man.

The more beneficial experiences someone has, the lower their mistrust and tendency to self-inhibition are. Interesetingly, positive and negative experiences are positively correlated which implies that you cannot only experience the pos. side.

With a sample of 1,410 German participants, we find that having harmful experiences like feeling compelled to give up personal data or accidentally accepting cookies positively relates to mistrust into online companies and the tendency to inhibit one’s digital behaviors (e.g., not using a service).

So far, 3rd level divide studies conceptualized inequality as differences in (not) experiencing benefits by using digital technology. In our view, this ignores harmful experiences such as violations of one’s privacy during tech-use which might be associated with higher mistrust and self-inhibition.

Amazing news!! Congrats and welcome to UDE🥳