Accounting for "the social" in contact tracing applications

The paradox between public health governance and mistrust of government's data use

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5260964
AutoresY T Li (0000-0002-4897-3616, UNSW Sydney, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume8
Fascículo2
Data de publicação2021-07-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoBig Data & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2053-9517 • E-ISSN: 2053-9517
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/20539517211054277
OpenAlexW3213787129
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6
Referências citadas13

This essay adopts three accounts (sociological, neoliberal, and cybernetic) of "the social" to get a clearer picture of why there is a barrier faced by the government when implementing contact tracing mobile applications. In Hong Kong's context, the paradox involves declining trust of the government's protection of data privacy and growing concern about data surveillance since the 2019 social unrest I argue that exploring the idea of sociality is valuable in that it re-reconfigures the datafication of pandemic control by revealing different sets of social relations, particularly the asymmetrical power relation between the government and its people. The refusal to download or use the mobile app also shows that the public has a faith in human agency and human resistance in data-saturated cities

Corporate governance · Economics · Governmentality · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing · Law · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Public Administration