The Smartphone Pandemic: Mobile technologies and data in the COVID-19 response (SMARTCOVID)

COVID-19 is the first pandemic in the age of the smartphone. New digital technologies such as contact tracing apps and mobile localization data have been used to model, monitor, and control the pandemic, often building on experimentation in humanitarian contexts and low-income countries. The rapid adoption of digital technologies by both authoritarian and democratic governments in the early days of the pandemic invoked images of dystopian “Big Brother” digital surveillance – as well as utopian hopes that technology could help curb the pandemic. The Smartphone Pandemic project aimed to provide insights into the political and societal implications of this rapidly evolving use of smartphone technologies and data in official responses to the pandemic. Based on case studies within diverse political and health systems contexts (Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Japan, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Norway), the team analysed national experiences and global norms and institutions governing the use of smartphone technologies and data in times of crisis. The growing power of tech corporations A main finding is that the pandemic led to new forms of partnerships between ‘Big Tech’ and telecoms corporations and public health authorities that challenged both established public health norms and principles of digital sovereignty, the idea that nations must have sovereignty over their own digital data. Such partnerships focused on digital contact tracing, epidemic modelling, and public health communication through social media platforms and chat bots to manage the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation about the new coronavirus. The project drew attention to what the digital response to Covid-19 reveals about tech corporations' growing power to influence public health agendas. This includes promoting technical solutions to public health challenges that are seductive to politicians, but that have uncertain effectiveness and societal implications that warrant critical scrutiny. Apps had limited impact The research highlighted how the use and impacts of digital contact tracing and other digital solutions as policy tools depend on contextual factors such as the approach to primary health care, the social and political determinants of health, and relationships to techno-optimism. Across the study settings, the project found that apps designed to locate, contact trace, and report on social distancing had limited public health impact, did not solve pandemic health governance challenges, and often failed to help the people most likely to become sick from the virus. Along with digital interventions aimed at the reopening of societies in a world ‘after Covid-19’, including digital vaccine passports and return-to-work apps, such interventions have alarming potential to distract from traditional public health responses, and to undermine practices of social justice and equity in global health. Ethical considerations should be included in pandemic preparedness and response The project highlighted how pandemic technologies were implemented against a backdrop of weak or lacking regulation at global and national levels and based on experimentation in low-income countries that rarely benefits populations in these countries. The many ethical issues associated with smartphone-based technologies deployed during the pandemic – relating to privacy, curtailment of civil liberties, and techno-elite determination of health policies – highlight the need to involve ethicists in pandemic preparedness and response who take a broader public health approach. The need to challenge uncritical techno-optimism The project findings provide high-value information and cost- and time-saving insights about which smartphone elements can be expected to perform and which ones will likely disappoint. Ultimately, the findings challenge uncritical techno-optimism within pandemic preparedness and response thinking and underscore that future public health emergencies can only be addressed through sustained, equitable and cross-societal investments in public health and pandemic preparedness, prioritizing those most at risk for getting, spreading, and dying of pandemics. The project increased interdisciplinary and international research collaboration through the establishment of a team of researchers with expertise in disciplines including medical and social anthropology, political science and international relations, and political philosophy. The research has contributed to an emerging field of critical social scientific research on digital technologies and data as pandemic preparedness and response tools. The project has actively communicated the research results and published several academic articles and commentaries, as well as presented at various academic conferences. The project has also reached a wider audience by writing commentaries and feature stories in Norwegian and international media, participating in webinars and podcasts, and given expert interviews.

The project’s outcomes include increased interdisciplinary and international research collaboration through the establishment of a team of researchers with expertise in disciplines including medical and social anthropology, political science and international relations, and political philosophy, based at research institutions in Sierra Leone, Norway, Myanmar, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. The project contributes to establishing a field of critical social scientific research on digital technologies and data as pandemic preparedness and response tools, drawing specific attention to how the participation of technology and telecommunication companies, who are most often corporations, may be shaping the future of global public health. An important scientific impact is to identify links between governance, ethical and normative thinking, and implementation of technologies in diverse contexts. The team has already contributed to field-building through the publication of peer-reviewed publications, academic commentaries, a special journal issue and graduate-level teaching, as well as through popular dissemination activities including webinars, podcasts, popular media articles, blogs, podcasts, and public events. The project’s societal impacts include societal understanding of the rapid transformations that digitalization is bringing to societies in diverse parts of the world. Specifically, our dissemination has sought to highlight how claims about the effectiveness and salvatory promise of digital health technologies often are based on weak evidence, and to make the public and policymakers better equipped to question unsubstantiated claims of their benefits. Our research has also contributed to public debate about the increasingly important role that technology companies are acquiring within public health, not just as suppliers of technological innovations, but as advisers and participants in public policy making. In the longer term, we hope to challenge uncritical techno-optimism within pandemic preparedness and response thinking. We hope that our research will instill a broader understanding that future public health emergencies can only be addressed through sustained, equitable and cross-societal investments in public health and pandemic preparedness, prioritizing those most at risk for getting, spreading, and dying of pandemics.

Will people let public health authorities track their movements through mobile phone data as they seek to establish the effectiveness of Covid-19 countermeasures like physical distancing, school closures and travel restrictions? Until recently, such questions seemed unfathomable outside of authoritarian regimes. However, the COVID-19 pandemic response has seen the rapid introduction of digital innovations like smartphone apps and mobile data in countries’ efforts to manage the crisis. New partnerships between governments and tech companies and new legal injunctions passed without public oversight have created a ‘data governance crisis of international concern’ that seems set to fundamentally alter the way we think about privacy in relation to the public good. The SMARTPREP project provides the first investigation of the political, social and ethical implications of new uses of digital innovations in the COVID-19 response. It will analyse global data governance norms and provide case studies of Norway and Sierra Leone. Norway is currently at the forefront of experimenting with digital innovations as part of its effort to stem its outbreak, while Sierra Leone is drawing on experience of using smartphone tech during the Ebola crisis in 2014-2015 to prepare for a likely outbreak there. The project will explore how political and cultural differences affect public responses to digital innovation in times of crisis, while established relationships between the two countries around health information and development aid will make it possible to study instances of policy and technology transfer. The project will provide policy-relevant knowledge about how digital innovations affect the way societies think of, prepare for, and respond to pandemic risk, and novel insights into how the use of digital innovations to fight the pandemic can challenge core societal values such as democracy, privacy and trust, with potential implications for the effectiveness of countermeasures.