Madianou Mirca
Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
Soc Media Soc. 2020 Aug 6;6(3):2056305120948168. doi: 10.1177/2056305120948168. eCollection 2020 Jul.
One of the most striking features of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom has been the disproportionate way in which it has affected Black, Asian, ethnic minority, and working class people. In this article, I argue that digital technologies and data practices in the response to COVID-19 amplify social inequalities, which are already accentuated by the pandemic, thus leading to a "second-order disaster"-a human-made disaster which further traps disadvantaged people into precarity. Inequalities are reproduced both in the everyday uses of technology for distance learning and remote work as well as in the public health response. Applications such as contact tracing apps raise concerns about "function creep"-the reuse of data for different purposes than the one for which they were originally collected-while they normalize surveillance which has been traditionally used on marginalized communities. The outsourcing of the digital public health response consolidates the arrival of the privatized digital welfare state, which increases risks of potential discrimination.
英国新冠疫情最显著的特征之一是其对黑人、亚裔、少数族裔和工人阶级人群产生了不成比例的影响。在本文中，我认为应对新冠疫情时的数字技术和数据实践加剧了社会不平等，而这种不平等已经因疫情而加剧，从而导致了一场“二阶灾难”——一场人为灾难，它进一步使弱势群体陷入不稳定状态。不平等在技术用于远程学习和远程工作的日常使用中以及公共卫生应对中都得以重现。诸如接触者追踪应用程序之类的应用引发了对“功能蔓延”的担忧——即数据被用于与最初收集目的不同的其他目的——同时它们使传统上用于边缘化社区的监视行为常态化。数字公共卫生应对工作的外包巩固了私有化数字福利国家的到来，这增加了潜在歧视的风险。
