Disclosure in the Digital Age: investigating the impact of transparency on political participation

The development of digital public records databases under the policy doctrines of open-government and transparency has significantly increased visibility of information about the political participation records of citizens. Many states in the US have public disclosure mandates to make available records of campaign contributions, petition signatures, and other forms of voter information – all of which contain personally identifiable details. While this disclosure is meant to promote the public interest, these public records databases can be merged with other digital data and repurposed to facilitate negative social sanctions and reprisals against individuals who have made contributions or signed petitions in popularly initiated referendums. Scholars, lawmakers, and courts are divided on the extent to which online access to public records increases more serious forms of reprisals, with some arguing that this practice will have chilling effects on future political participation in referendums.
This thesis investigates the extent to which digital databases of political participation records from referendum campaigns have been used and repurposed to facilitate reprisals, and to what extent public disclosure could have chilling effects on participation in referendum campaigns. The study employs a mixed-methods approach comprised of two case studies, a laboratory experiment and an online experiment. The case studies explore the use of online public records in popularly initiated referendums regarding same-sex marriage rights in California and Washington, while the experiments were used to understand the impact of public disclosure notification on an individual’s willingness to sign petitions and demonstrate support for divisive political issues.
The findings from the case studies show that while governments are motivated to provide online access to public information to achieve democratic outcomes, activists are instead motivated to use public records to facilitate social sanctions against their opponents and to alter their participatory efforts in the political process. However, these reprisals were mostly legal forms of political protest against businesses and institutions rather than illegal forms of harassment against individuals. Additionally, the results of both experiments did not find strong evidence to support the argument that public disclosure has chilling effects on political participation. However, the presence of heterogeneous effects between different groups of people remains unclear – a finding that should drive future research on this topic.
The findings from this research advance understanding of digital public records and political participation within the framework of democratic theory and social influence, and provide empirical evidence that counters the chilling effects hypothesis. The study concludes with recommendations for public policy, which include providing online public disclosure notification on petitions in order to achieve a more optimal balance of democratic outcomes in the context of popularly initiated referendum campaigns.

Keywords: chilling effects
petitions
Public disclosure
Political participation
digital democracy
democracy
direct democracy
transparency
public records
digital data
Referendums
Advisor: Margetts, H
Meyer, E