Dis-ease Surveillance: How Might Surveillance Studies Address COVID-19?

Abstract

We are currently in the midst of a global pandemic with the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 . While we do not know how this situation will unfold or resolve, we do have insight into how it fits within existing patterns and relations, particularly those pertaining to sociocultural constructions of (in)security, vulnerability, and risk. We can see evidence of surveillance dynamics at play with how bodies and pathogens are being measured, tracked, predicted, and regulated. We can grasp how threat is being racialized, how and why institutions are flailing, and how social media might be fueling social divisions. There is, in other words, a lot that our scholarly community could add to the conversation. In this rapid-response editorial, we provide an introduction to the framing devices of disease surveillance and discuss how a surveillance studies orientation could help us think critically about the present crisis and its possible aftermath. Epidemics, Pandemics, and OutbreaksPopular culture has furnished us with countless representations of the apocalyptic fallout stemming from uncontrolled communicable disease. For example, in the 1995 Wolfgang Petersen film, Outbreak-an adaptation of Richard Preston's The Hot Zone-Dustin Hoffman plays a US Army virologist given the harrowing task of tracking down the cause of a mysterious illness while his superiors attempt to suppress

Health surveillance during covid-19 pandemic

“…Another is “surveillance creep,” when surveillance developed for a limited purpose, such as fighting a pandemic or filming traffic violations, becomes used in ever more pervasive and permanent ways. Scholars and activists are already warning that much of the surveillance we accept today as “exceptional means for exceptional times” is here to stay 6…”

Resilience against crises: COVID-19 and lessons from natural disasters

“…How might we include sensitive topics (such as race, ethnicity, and gender) and marginalised populations (such as people with disabilities, sexual and gender minorities, and Indigenous peoples) to develop pluralistic frameworks of resilience? We hope that our recommendations can help develop digital frameworks and related policies in a way that fosters resilience, decreases the levels of surveillance, and addresses the issues related to marginalisation (French & Monahan, 2020). Table 2 provides a summary of contributions in terms of the current thinking on resilience in the context of crisis management, and the implications of this study to resilience-related information systems research and practice.…”

The acceptability and uptake of smartphone tracking for COVID-19 in Australia

“…People engage in a "privacy calculus" when balancing the benefits (public health) and consequences (surveillance creep) of disclosing sensitive data (Dienlin & Metzger, 2016). For mobile tracking technologies to be effective, their benefits must outweigh concerns over privacy, security, and risk of harm (French & Monahan, 2020).…”