Data justice and COVID-19 : Global perspectives
Linnet Taylor, Gargi Sharma, Aaron Martin, Shazade Jameson · Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) · 2020
This book is a product of an exceptional moment in the evolving relations between technology, power, and justice.In early 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world and states of emergency were declared by one country after another, the global technology sector-already equipped with unprecedented wealth, power, and influence-mobilised to seize the opportunity.This collection is an account of what happened next.The story these essays tell took place in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, capturing the emergent conflicts and responses around the world.The essays also provide a global perspective on the implications of these conflicts and responses for justice: they make it possible to compare how the intersection of state and corporate power-and the way that power is targeted and exercised-confronts, and invites resistance from, civil society in countries worldwide.The collection consists of two main sections: commentaries and dispatches.We first invited authors from different countries, cross-border communities, regions, and sectors to write dispatches, which provide a point-in-time and local reflection on the role that data, technology, and industry are playing in the COVID-19 response.The dispatches come from every continent with confirmed cases of the virus, to permit a comparative analysis.We then made the dispatches available to a second group of authors who commented on emergent themes.We present these thematic commentaries first.The global spread of countries included here reflects the unfolding of the first wave of the pandemic and must be understood in that context.For instance, it does not consider the connections between pandemic responses, data, and the Black Lives Matter protests, which unfolded as a result of this first wave.We should expect these connections to become the focus of scholarship by data justice researchers around the world in the coming months.