Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781108485876)

In Chilling Effects, Jonathon W. Penney explores the increasing weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and new technology to repress and control us. With corporations, governments, and extremist actors using big data, cyber-mobs, AI, and other threats to limit our rights and freedoms, concerns about chilling effects - or how these activities deter us from exercising our rights - have become urgent. Penney draws on law, privacy, and social science to present a new conformity theory that highlights the dangers of chilling effects and their potential to erode democracy and enable a more illiberal future. He critiques conventional theories and provides a framework for predicting, explaining, and evaluating chilling effects in a range of contexts. Urgent and timely, Chilling Effects sheds light on the repressive and conforming effects of technology, state, and corporate power, and offers a roadmap of how to respond to their weaponization today and in the future.

Author: Jonathon W. Penney
ISBN-10: 1108485871
ISBN-13: 9781108485876
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/20/2025
Pages: 250
Format: Hardcover