The Role of Digital Communication Needs and Norms for Dataveillance-Related Self-Inhibition

Perceived salience of dataveillance—the collection and analysis of digital traces by corporate and state actors—can increase expectations of negative consequences from digital communication, leading to online self-inhibition. This process, known as the chilling effects of dataveillance, can limit participation in today's digital society, where being online is a need and norm. The uses and gratifications (U&G) approach and social norms theories suggest that users are motivated to engage in digital communication based on felt needs and perceived norms, which would reduce their susceptibility to chilling effects. This study investigates whether such need- and norm-based motives for free digital communication mitigate chilling effects. Using a representative survey sample from the Swiss-German internet population ( N = 898), we conducted mediation and moderation analyses to test this assumption across three prevalent digital communication behaviors: searching for information, expressing opinions, and disclosing personal information. Results revealed that perceived salience of dataveillance and expected negative consequences from digital communication were overall associated with self-inhibition. In contrast, need- and norm-based motives did not mitigate these associations, suggesting that chilling effects of dataveillance do not depend on stronger motives driving free digital communication in this study. By introducing U&G and social norms approaches into chilling effects research, this study advances our limited understanding of chilling effects’ boundary conditions. It offers representative, behavior-specific evidence aligning with the theoretical process of chilling effects, highlighting the potential gravity of being exposed to dataveillance in everyday life.