TEMPORAL DYNAMICS OF CHILLING EFFECTS OF DATAVEILLANCE: EMPIRICAL FINDINGS FROM A LONGITUDINAL FIELD EXPERIMENT

Abstract

Digital traces generated by internet users are automatically collected, stored, and analyzed by public and private actors. This dataveillance becomes salient to users through repeated exposure over time to triggers of a sense of dataveillance. This can lead to a range of consequences including democratically concerning responses such as the self-inhibition of legitimate digital communication behavior, known as the chilling effects of dataveillance. Such chilling effects are expected to subtly accumulate over time. Hence, longitudinal in-situ studies are required to capture the temporal dynamics of individuals’ perception of dataveillance and the resulting behavioral changes. Relying on a longitudinal online field experiment with a representative sample of Swiss internet users, this study investigates how chilling effects accumulate over time and aims to capture the temporal dynamics of chilling effects. Preliminary results reveal that the experimental treatment successfully heightened participants' sense of dataveillance over time. Time significantly predicted this increase, aligning with the notion of accumulating chilling effects. Furthermore, the comfort levels of the digital communication behaviors, including information searching, opinion voicing, and information disclosing, were over time lower for the experimental treatment than control condition, supporting the chilling-effects hypothesis. Accumulating chilling effects were found for information disclosing as the experimental treatment and time predicted a decrease in participants’ comfortability level. This article provides an innovative contribution to the growing research on the chilling effects of dataveillance and adds to the empirical understanding of the nature of chilling effects.