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Full-Text Articles in Science and Technology Studies
Public Goods From Private Data: An Effectiveness And Justification Dilemma For Digital Contact Tracing, Andrew Buzzell
Public Goods From Private Data: An Effectiveness And Justification Dilemma For Digital Contact Tracing, Andrew Buzzell
The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique
Debate about the adoption of digital contact tracing (DCT) apps to control the spread of COVID-19 has focussed on risks to individual privacy. This emphasis reveals significant challenges to ethical deployment of DCT, but generates constraints which undermine justification to implement DCT. It would be a mistake to view this result solely as the successful operation of ethical foresight analysis, preventing deployment of potentially harmful technology. Privacy-centric analysis treats data as private property, frames the relationship between individuals and governments as adversarial, entrenches technology platforms as gatekeepers, and supports a conception of emergency public health authority as limited by individual …
Tactics Against Scheming Diseases, Brian Martin
Tactics Against Scheming Diseases, Brian Martin
The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique
Achieving good health can be thought of as a struggle against opponents—disease and unhealthy practices—that are imagined to be active agents, in a type of thought experiment. These opponents of health, to reduce outrage about their activities, draw on a standard set of tactics: cover-up of the threat, devaluation of victims, reinterpretation of what is happening, use of official processes to give an illusion of safety, and intimidation. To promote good health, each of these tactics can be countered, by exposure of the problem, validation of victims, reframing of what is happening, mobilisation of support, and resistance. Three case studies …