Evidence for deleterious effects of governmental surveillance on democratic discourse and expression of minority political views.
This study was set up to test the effect knowledge about governmental surveillance would have on participants’ (255 in total, sourced from a commercial survey firm) willingness to discuss and issue controversial and minority opinions. The participants were primed with the US’ continued airstrikes on ISIS as the political topic to be discussed and randomly selected to either be exposed to a message that would prime them to perceive themselves as under governmental surveillance or not. They were then asked to imagine coming across a (normatively neutral) post about the US airstrikes on ISIS in their Facebook news feed and asked about their perception of how other Americans would feel about this topic as well as their own willingness to publically express their own opinions on this topic, followed by questions about the extend they thought governmental surveillance was justified and their demographic information. While the results suggest a more nuanced effect than the often assumed blanket silencing, it does provide evidence that awareness of governmental surveillance significantly decreases participants’ willingness to express personal opinion within a hostile opinion climate for participants who approved of governmental surveillance as well as for those who disapproved, strongly suggesting a stifling effect on democratic discourse in general.
Original Source:
Elizabeth Stoycheff, Under Surveillance – Examining Facebookâs Spiral of Silence Effects in the Wake of NSA Internet Monitoring, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, March 2016.
http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/02/25/1077699016630255.full
http://m.jmq.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/02/25/1077699016630255.full.pdf