Berkman Klein Center For Internet And Society: Audio Fishbowl

With Internet censorship and mass surveillance on the rise globally, understanding regulatory "chilling effects"— the idea that laws, regulations, or state surveillance can deter people from exercising their freedoms or engaging in entirely legal activities— has thus today, in our Post-Snowden world, taken on greater urgency and public importance. Yet, the notion is not uncontroversial; commentators, scholars, and researchers, from a variety of fields, have long questioned such chilling effects claims, including their existence or extent of any "chill" and related harms, particularly so in online contexts, leading to recent calls for more systematic and interdisciplinary research on point. In this talk, Jon draws on his doctoral research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, to help fill in some of the gaps in our understanding of chilling effects online. Through discussion of three empirical legal case studies— one on surveillance-related chilling effects and Wikipedia, a second on the