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The digital response to COVID-19 : Exploring the use of digital technology for information collection, dissemination and social control in a global pandemic
Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning,
14
(4),
333-353
(2021)
Abstract
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a global surge in the development and implementation of digital interventions to diagnose, track, prevent and mitigate the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. To date, however, there has been little research to characterise the vast scope and scale of these novel, ad hoc and widely varied digital tools. This paper helps fill this gap by providing a descriptive summary of the digital response to COVID-19. The research finds that the digital response can be broken into four main categories: 1) tracking the spread of the virus (contact tracing); 2) controlling social behaviour during the outbreak (social behaviour monitoring); 3) information gathering and dissemination about the virus (one-way and two-way public communications); and 4) diagnosis and treatment (remote diagnostics and treatment). This paper describes the four response categories and provides examples of the digital technologies being developed and implemented for these purposes. This descriptive understanding provides a contextual foundation for subsequent research to analyse the opportunities and challenges associated with the development, implementation and uptake of digital interventions, alongside the development of analytical frameworks and guidance.
Keywords: COVID-19; innovation; digital technology; infodemic; risk analysis; digital response; surveillance
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Jennie Phillips is a research fellow with the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health at York University and doctoral fellow with the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Dr Phillips also teaches part-time at York University in the Disaster & Emergency Management programme. Her practitioner experience focuses on education, innovation, training and research. She specialises in digitally-enabled human behaviour during crisis, and risk measurement and resilience development in complex virtual online networks. Her current research focuses on the digital response to COVID-19, digital response networks and networked resilience.
Rebecca A. Babcock is a research coordinator at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University. Her research interests include digital ethics, global health, humanitarianism and planetary health. Rebecca received her master of bioethics and health law from the University of Otago and her BA in English literature and theatre from McGill University.
James Orbinski is Director of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University and an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. An Officer of the Order of Canada, he has 30 years of clinical, leadership, field and research experience in global health. He is a former international president of Médecins sans Frontières and co-founder of Dignitas International. Dr Orbinski holds a BSc from Trent University, an MD degree from McMaster University, and an MA in international relations from the University of Toronto.
Citation
Phillips, Jennie, Babcock, Rebecca A. and Orbinski, James (2021, June 1). The digital response to COVID-19 : Exploring the use of digital technology for information collection, dissemination and social control in a global pandemic. In the Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, Volume 14, Issue 4. https://doi.org/10.69554/QLQR5882.
© Henry Stewart
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