Chilling Effects

Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age

Jonathon W. Penney (Dalhousie University Schulich School of Law)

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English

Cambridge University Press
30 November 2025

E-commerce law

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.

By: Jonathon W. Penney (Dalhousie University Schulich School of Law)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781108725309
ISBN 10: 1108725309
Pages: 250
Publication Date: 30 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction; Part I. Conventional Chilling Effects Theories and their Limits: 1. Law's Flawed Theory and its McCarthy Era Origins; 2. Privacy's Useful but Limited Theory; Part II. A New Understanding: 3. Social Chilling Effects; 4. A Conformity Theory of Chilling Effects; 5. A Taxonomy of Chilling Effects; Part III. Implications: 6. The Dangers of Chilling Effects; 7. What Chilling Effects Theory is For; 8. A Framework for Hard Cases; 9. Transforming Chilling Effects Doctrine; 10. The Future of Chilling Effects and How to Stop It; Conclusion.

Jonathon W. Penney is a legal scholar and social scientist. His award-winning research on privacy, technology, and human rights has received national and international attention, including coverage in the Washington Post, NY Times, Reuters International, WIRED, The Guardian, Le Monde, and beyond.