There is a great deal of writing about this moment, about how the digital choices societies make now about COVID-19 will influence the digital society that emerges afterward. We’ll add links as we come across them, focusing on contributions that seek to guide/inform policy and technical responses, but note that organizations like The Syllabus are doing so more comprehensively.
Identity and Privacy
Access Now. “Access Now Releases Recommendations on Privacy and Data Protection in the Fight against COVID-19.” Access Now (blog). March 31, 2020.
Anderson, Ross. “Contact Tracing in the Real World.” Light Blue Touchpaper (blog). April 12, 2020.
Andrejevic, Mark, and Neil Selwyn. “COVID-19 Highlights the Pros and Cons of Digital Tracking.” Lens. March 9, 2020.
Arcila, Beatriz Botero. “We Need Privacy and Data Laws to Tackle This World Pandemic.” OpenGlobalRights. April 16, 2020.
Aschoff, Nicole. “We Should Have a Democratic Debate About Trade-Offs Between Public Safety and Privacy.” JACOBIN. April 14, 2020.
Blue, Violet. “The Surveillance Profiteers of COVID-19 Are Here.” Engadget. March 27, 2020.
Dawson, Philip. “COVID-19 Tracking Data Should Be Managed the Way Data Trusts Are.” Policy Options, April 20, 2020.
Electronic Frontier Foundation. “COVID-19 and Digital Rights,” April 2020.
Franke, Jan-David. “This Window of Opportunism.” About:Intel (blog), April 6, 2020.
Franklin, Sharon Bradford. “The Wrong Way to Use Location Data in the Pandemic.” Slate Magazine, April 8, 2020.
Gathara, Patrick. “In the Time of Pandemic, We Need to Be Vigilant.” Al Jazeera, April 14, 2020.
Gqola, Pumla Dineo. “On Movement, Human Rights and COVID-19,” New Frame. March 26, 2020.
Gray, Stacy. “A Closer Look at Location Data: Privacy and Pandemics.” Future of Privacy Forum, March 25, 2020.
Greenwood, Faine. “Google Wants Your Data in Exchange for a Coronavirus Test.” Foreign Policy (blog). March 30, 2020.
Guariglia, Matthew, and Quintin Cooper. “Thermal Imaging Cameras Are Still Dangerous Dragnet Surveillance Cameras.” Electronic Frontier Foundation. April 7, 2020.
Harvey, Hugh. “Beware the COVID-Tech Cowboys.” Hardian Health (blog). April 1, 2020.
Joshi, Divij, and Amba Kak. “India’s Digital Response to COVID-19 Risks Inefficacy, Exclusion and Discrimination.” The Caravan, April 19, 2020.
Kumar, Sanya, and Shrutanjaya Bhardwaj. “The Publication of COVID-19 Quarantine Lists Violates the Right to Privacy.” The Caravan, April 5, 2020.
Lee, Jean H. “Using Tech to Fight the Virus: How Much Privacy Are South Koreans Relinquishing in the Battle against COVID-19?” Wilson Center. April 7, 2020.
Leonard, John. “Covid-19: The Race to Create Privacy-Focused Contact Tracing Tools.” Computing. April 7, 2020.
Manokha, Ivan. “How Data-Mining Companies Are Set to Gain from the Covid-19 Pandemic.” OpenDemocracy. March 31, 2020.
McDonald, Sean. “The Digital Response to the Outbreak of COVID-19.” Centre for International Governance Innovation. March 20, 2020.
Micek, Peter, and Natalia Krapiva. “Protect Digital Rights, Promote Public Health: Toward a Better Coronavirus Response.” Access Now (blog). March 6, 2020.
Morozov, Evgeny. “The Tech ‘Solutions’ for Coronavirus Take the Surveillance State to the next Level.” The Guardian, April 15, 2020, sec. Opinion.
Omanovic, Edin. “The Surveillance Industry Won’t Save Us from Crises.” OpenDemocracy. April 6, 2020.
Panigrahi, Subhashish. “Is India Fighting COVID-19 the ‘Mass Surveillance’ Way?” Global Voices (blog). April 4, 2020.
Pearson, Jordan. “Apple and Google’s Coronavirus Tracking Plan Is a Symptom of Their Power.” Vice (blog). April 16, 2020.
Peckham, Robert. “Coronavirus: The Low Tech of the High Tech.” Somatosphere (blog). March 6, 2020.
Pisa, Michael. “COVID-19, Information Problems, and Digital Surveillance.” Center For Global Development. March 20, 2020.
Public Knowledge. Protecting Privacy During the Pandemic. YouTube Live Stream, April 9, 2020.
Pundir, Pallavi. “Coronavirus is Pushing Mass Surveillance in India, and It’s Going to Change Everything.” Vice (blog). April 6, 2020.
Roberts, Stephen L. “Tracking Covid-19 Using Big Data and Big Tech: A Digital Pandora’s Box.” British Politics and Policy at LSE (blog). April 20, 2020.
Stanley, Jay, and Jennifer Stisa Granick. “The Limits of Location Tracking in an Epidemic.” ACLU White Paper. New York, NY: American Civil Liberties Union, April 8, 2020.
Stojanovski, Filip. “COVID-19 Pandemic Adversely Affects Digital Rights in the Balkans.” Global Voices (blog). March 30, 2020.
Swire, Peter. “Security, Privacy and the Coronavirus: Lessons from 9/11.” Lawfare (blog). March 24, 2020.
Tichy-Fisslberger, Elisabeth, Marc Limon, Nanjira Sambuli, Peter Micek, and Scott Campbell. “Technology and Human Rights in Times of Crisis.” Panel Presentation by DiploFoundation, March 26, 2020.
Venkataramakrishnan, Rohan. “Will the Coronavirus Crisis Inevitably Result in an Expansion of the Surveillance State in India?” Scroll.In. April 5, 2020.
Wong, Joan. “Countries Are Using Apps and Data Networks to Keep Tabs on the Pandemic.” The Economist, March 26, 2020.
Digital Livelihoods
Baba, Cache. “How COVID-19 Will Push for an Even More Aggressive Automation.” Medium. March 22, 2020.
Chaibi, Leila. “Pandemic Is Time to Recognise Gig Workers’ Rights.” EUobserver. March 30, 2020.
Chohan, Usman W. “A Post-Coronavirus World: 7 Points of Discussion for a New Political Economy.” SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3557738. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, March 20, 2020.
Corkery, Michael, and David Gelles. “Robots Welcome to Take Over, as Pandemic Accelerates Automation.” The New York Times, April 10, 2020, sec. Business.
Fairwork Foundation. “The Politics of COVID-19: Gig Work in the Coronavirus Crisis.” Red Pepper (blog). April 18, 2020.
Jaffe, Sarah, and Michelle Chen. “Belabored Podcast #193: Work in the Time of Coronavirus.” Dissent Magazine, March 14, 2020.
Roberts, Sarah T. “Digital Humanity: Social Media Content Moderation and the Global Tech Workforce in the COVID-19 Era.” Flow (blog). March 19, 2020.
Silvers, Damon. “Coronavirus, the Gig Economy, and What This Means for the Future of Work.” Medium. March 20, 2020.
The Economist. “Delivery Apps Have Transformed Urban Life in China.” The Economist, April 3, 2020.
Thomas, Zoe. “Will Covid-19 Accelerate the Use of Robots at Work?” BBC News, April 19, 2020, sec. Technology.
Public Sphere
Fourcade, Marion, and Henry Farrel. “The Dangers of Moving All of Democracy Online.” Wired, April 1, 2020.
Gorwa, Robert. “As Platforms Rely Less on Human Content Moderators, What’s at Stake?” Centre for International Governance Innovation. March 31, 2020.
Ingram, Mathew. “What Google and Facebook Need to Do to Fight Disinformation.” Columbia Journalism Review, April 9, 2020.
Koeze, Ella, and Nathaniel Popper. “The Virus Changed the Way We Internet.” The New York Times, April 7, 2020.
Mchangama, Jacob, and Sarah McLaughlin. “Coronavirus Has Started a Censorship Pandemic.” Foreign Policy, (blog). April 1, 2020.
Digital Political Economy
Alang, Navneet. “Coronavirus Is an Opportunity to Rethink Tech.” The Week, March 20, 2020.
Aouf, Rima Sabina. “Pandemic Is an Important Moment to Practise Design Justice Says Sasha Costanza-Chock.” Dezeen. April 6, 2020.
Bharthur, Deepti. “The Valley and the Virus.” Bot Populi (blog). April 3, 2020.
Cole, Matthew. “Why Silicon Valley Loves Coronavirus.” Tribune, March 25, 2020.
Lahm, Sarah. “How The Ed-Tech Industry Is Trying to Profit From COVID-19.” The Progressive, March 23, 2020.
Marx, Paris. “Nationalize Amazon.” JACOBIN. March 29, 2020.
Moore, Samuel. “COVID-19 and the Future of Open Access.” Samuel Moore (blog). April 7, 2020.
Muldoon, James. “Airbnb Has Been Rocked by COVID-19. Do We Really Want to See It Recover?” OpenDemocracy. April 4, 2020.
Muller, Joann. “The New Labor Movement That’s Being Inspired by the Coronavirus.” Axios. April 1, 2020.
Mullin, Joe. “Lengthening Patent Terms by 10 Years Is Exactly the Wrong Response to COVID-19.” Electronic Frontier Foundation. April 8, 2020.
O’Sullivan, Feargus. “Can Airbnb Survive Coronavirus?” CityLab, April 3, 2020.
Ocampo, Omar. “Should Zoom Be a Public Utility?” Inequality.Org. March 23, 2020.
Olazabal, Veronica, Michael Bamberger, and Peter York. “Rewiring How We Measure Impact in a Post-COVID-19 World.” The Rockefeller Foundation, (blog). April 6, 2020.
Orcutt, Mike. “We Just Glimpsed How a ‘Digital Dollar’ Might Work, Thanks to Coronavirus.” MIT Technology Review, March 26, 2020.
Reigner, Michael. “Global Information Governance in Pandemic Times.” Völkerrechtsblog (blog). April 10, 2020.
Sharon, Tamar. “When Google and Apple Get Privacy Right, Is There Still Something Wrong?” Medium. April 15, 2020.
Smith, Talmon Joseph. “The Coronavirus Exposes Amazon’s Algorithmic Greed.” The New Republic, March 11, 2020.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. “The COVID-19 Crisis: Accentuating the Need to Bridge Digital Divides.” UNCTAD/DTL/INF/2020/1. Geneva, Switzerland: UNCTAD, April 6, 2020.
Waldron, Travis. “The Pandemic Is Crushing The Journalism Industry. The Government Could Save It.” Huffington Post, April 12, 2020.
Williamson, Ben. “New Pandemic Edtech Power Networks.” Code Acts in Education (blog). April 1, 2020.
Wong, Julia Carrie. “‘The US of Amazon’: How the Coronavirus Has Created a Governance Vacuum the Tech Giant Is Quickly Filling.” The Guardian, March 24, 2020, sec. Technology.