Handbook of Media Economics, vol 1B

wake of revelations about government surveillance—in other words, does it constrain

users’ search for differing perspectives?

Second, are journalists themselves chilled in their use of sources, or forced toward

more expensive and burdensome means of secure communication in order to pursue

their craft without fear of legal repercussions? Does surveillance compound the effects

discussed above, that already encourage mainstream news outlets to substitute toward

less controversial and less general-interest news?

Third in this field would be the welfare implications of “Open Data”—government

initiatives to release large datasets to the public for analysis and reuse. In

Acquisti and

Tucker (2014)

, “Guns, Privacy and Crime,” we investigate an attempt by