This chapter considers EU data protection law, most notably Regulation 2016/679, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR governs the processing of data that identifies an individual or makes her identifiable. It sets out circumstances when the process is lawful. The most notable of these is that the individual consented to it; processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority; or the data is required for the pursuit of a party’s legitimate interests unless the fundamental rights of the individual overrides these interests. Individuals have a number of rights in respect of their personal data. These include the right to information about it and to access it, and to rectify inaccurate or incomplete personal data. Arguably, most contentiously, the individual can have the data erased if she withdraws her consent or the data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was processed. This right must be balanced against other interests, most notably the freedom of others to expression and information.

Do citizens think polarization is a threat? Does it impact how they define good citizenship? Chapter 5 presents the first vignette survey experiment on the effects of information on polarization as a threat on citizenship norms. We find citizens who receive the polarization treatment are significantly more vigilant (“watches the government”) than the control group in all three cases. A disaggregated analysis by partisanship reveals that the effects of the polarization treatment differ between the left and right. In highly polarized, winner-take-all contexts, polarization may be framed as a shared problem, but only partisan left challengers mobilize to repair it. There are differences in how they respond across cases, but we only see significant changes to citizenship norms within this subset of respondents.

How do citizens respond to information on electoral interference in their country? Chapter 6 presents the second vignette survey experiment, and we again see individuals taking distinct positions on citizenship norms that correspond to partisanship. Like in polarization, we see status quo challengers respond to threat. Unlike polarization, they respond not with norms of liberal democratic beliefs but with behavior – that is, expectations of a more active, engaged citizenry. Moreover, we also observe a strong status quo bias, in which winners of the election in question generally do nothing. Where norms are affected for citizens supporting incumbent power holders, we observe impatience (US) and demobilization (UK). Meanwhile, the partisan left – as governing outsiders and losers of the elections in question – are more likely to value vigilance – watching the government (US, UK) and understanding how politics and the government work (UK, Germany), alongside other active, engaged citizenship attributes. Evidence of interference in majoritarian systems, compared to Germany’s consensus political system, produces stronger partisan differences.