Triggers of a Sense of Dataveillance: Empirical Insights Into Characteristics and Determinants

The automatic collection, storage, and analysis of user-generated digital traces by public and private actors (i.e., dataveillance) becomes salient to users through 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. User-centered empirical research on the characteristics and determinants of such triggers remains scarce. Relying on a semistructured qualitative diary study with Swiss internet users, this article aims to map these triggers by (1) identifying and characterizing the triggers of a sense of dataveillance and (2) determining which everyday life events become triggers and why. The results show that triggers can be characterized by who initiates the everyday life event that becomes a trigger (i.e., corporate actors, public actors, private individual actors, and the self) and that everyday life events become triggers when users consume information about dataveillance or feel that they are or someone else is subjected to dataveillance. This is determined by the users’ dataveillance imaginaries and the visibility of dataveillance practices. This article provides an innovative user-centered contribution to research on individual differences in experiencing triggers of a sense of dataveillance and hence adds to the empirical understanding of the formation of chilling effects.