Claire Seungeun Lee (USA)

Professor, School of Criminology & Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell

This study examines contact tracing mobile applications (hereafter, contact tracing apps) for those who were subject to self-quarantine through the lenses of dataveillance and datafication. Using an Internet ethnography approach, self-quarantined Korean individuals’ blog entries were analyzed. The research argues that the application functions as a datafication tool that collects the self-quarantined people’s information and performs dataveillance on the self-quarantined people. This research further offers insights for various agreements/disagreements at different actors (i.e. the self-quarantined, their families, contact tracers/government officials) in the process of contact tracing for COVID-19. This study also provides insights into the implications of information and technology as they affect datafication and dataveillance conducted on the public.

Keynote Speech

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