The Unintrusive Nature of Digital Surveillance and Its Social Consequences; Xu XU (Princeton University)

Abstract

The world is witnessing an explosion of digital surveillance in recent years. Yet, we rarely saw massive surveillance states before the digital age. This paper examines citizens’ responses to digital surveillance versus in-person surveillance in dictatorships to identify potential causes of digital surveillance expansion. I argue that digital surveillance is less offensive than in-person surveillance because it does not entail human intrusion into citizens’ private lives. I manipulate information about surveillance operations in a field survey experiment on college students in two regions of China. I find that digital surveillance is less likely to undermine interpersonal trust and regime legitimacy than in-person surveillance. But both types of surveillance are effective in deterring political participation. I further establish the external validity of the experimental findings by using a nationally representative survey and a natural experiment caused by the 2015 Tianjin explosion. Overall, digital surveillance suppresses political participation, and the unintrusive nature of digital surveillance implies that it can expand rapidly without facing much resistance from society.

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