I am mainly part of the research collective called “COVID-19 Places: Turkey.” I focus on the COVID-19 disaster governance and scientific cultures. So far, we have worked through google docs. By September, we plan to hold regular meetings, and add more to the PECE essay. This group welcomes new members.
I also have many questions at local, national, and transnational levels. Nevertheless, in the short-term (Fall 2020), I want to focus on the following research topics/areas:
The transnational governance of COVID-19
The ways science-society relations (and/or scientific cultures) shape and are shaped by the governance of COVID-19 in specific places (from community to institution to city to nation-state scale).
Tactics that can be developed through transnational collaboration so as to respond to the various problems deepening and/or emerging in the midst of this disaster, e.g., the problems we (may) encounter as educators, and so on.
I imagine all these as collaborative studies.
On July 3, Selim Badur has interpreted this report (Açık Radyo - Korona Günleri programme) by drawing attention to "two interesting points":
1. The highest incidences were seen in persons aged 80 years and older but the second cluster includes persons aged 25 to 49 years (49.4%).
2. In the world, it is said that men are infected more than women. In Turkey, female cases aged 15 to 24 are more than male cases.
Senators write a letter to corporate CEOs to see if they will voluntarily participate in this form of corporate social responsibility.
It is clear that in the conditions of the pandemic, people who cannot afford internet connections and functioning devices will suffer more social, economic, and other hardships. People who are in places without internet infrastructure will be even less able to do their jobs, schooling, socializing, etc.
This CMU-led initiative tries to be ethical by taking privacy seriously in the sense of making users anonymous. Yet you have to allow the app permission to run constantly on your phone and access your mic. The app polices your violation of social distancing with another app user - if you come within 6 feet of someone who reports that they have tested positively for COVID-19, you will be alerted. It is important to know you have been exposed. What are the tradeoffs that come with doing it this way?
Training in programming skills takes a new prominence as an area of tech-for-good: previously, there was a great deal of focus on k-12 and university education to teach programming skills in order to increase social mobility and access to high-paying jobs, or just because STEM education is a good in some stories, or to increse diversity in tech fields as an end unto itself.
Now re-skilling, in this case through a private corporation's CSR and advertisement campagin for new paying membership, is taking on new significance as massive layoffs and furloughing has left people at home, responsibilized to find a new job. Meanwhile, the tech industry is in quite a few cases hiring as reliance on digital connectivity for things that were once done in-person has increased with quarantining.
By matching purchases of Pro Membership of their programming training with five donation subscriptions, this private business is casting itself as socially responsible. They are re-skiling people who have been furloughed or laid off during the pandemic and this allows them to be competitive for jobs that are still in demand as programmers. Programming and tech industries are the most resilient in a situation of social distancing, as everyone more or less fully relies on digital connectivity for interaction, and this company is capitalizing on that situation to increase its paying membership while boosting its image of social responsibility.
As a purchaser of Pro Membership, I'm doing a good because I'm "unlocking" the donations to 5 people who get the opportunity to receive training in a new skill through a premium version of a free platform, and this might get them employment.
An oversight board of 20 well-known, reputable individuals has been (publically) convened to make final decisions about contested content removal from the platform.
Critics note that content removal is not the only ethical issue Facebook has, and Siva Vaidhyanathan notes that the proprietary algorithm that shows people content is a serious issue over which this board has no authority.
Joan Donovan notes that the slow legalistic pace will not keep up even when damaging content is a serious ethical issue, as even only a few hours is sufficient for viral digital content to reach huge audiences:
Joan Donovan, the research director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center and an expert on media manipulation, raised concerns that the board would become “weaponized” by bad actors, who will use it as another opportunity to get their issues into the press.
“This theory of oversight is heavily informed by legal scholarship, which is slow and administrative and technical in nature, when we need something much more suited to the speed of the technology itself,” she said. “They’re going forward with this really long drawn out procedural mechanism that doesn’t address what the problem is – which is that viral content only needs to be on the internet for 4-8 hours for it to do its damage.”
Looking at the scale of the “infodemic” facing Facebook amid the coronavirus pandemic, Donovan said that the much more pressing concern is to solve the problem of “information curation, especially in a place like Facebook, that helps guide the user toward correct content and information rather than putting them in the middle a landfill and saying, ‘You sort it out’.” The oversight board is ultimately a distraction from “what really needs to happen”, she said, “which is to design technology that doesn’t allow for the expansive amplification of disinformation and health misinformation”.
Here Verizon presents itself as socially responsible by supprting small businesses with small grants.
Individuals are encouraged to support the "cause" of keeping businesses open. Businesses become like charities or a good to support with the dollars of consumers. The rest of Verizon's loans are "unlocked" with the shallow digital participation of using the hashtag #PayItForwardLIVE by viewers of the Verizon-sponsored living-room streamed concerts of famous artists.
Digital products that underly payment for small businesses (PayPal, Venmo, Square) are also portrayed as doing a social good by virtue of being platforms through which individuals can "Support" thier local businesses with gift cards, tips, and more.
Relatedly, in the USA Today article:
"The Small Business Administration program offers firms employing 500 or fewer workers low-interest loans to cover their costs while they're shuttered. But while the SBA has approved billions in loans since April 3, businesses point to a myriad of challenges in the PPP's rollout: technical glitches, an avalanche of requests, a lack of response, and an exhaustion of money." - so the Verizon grants as well as other grants are portrayed as heroically and competently stepping in to save small businesses, portrayed as the backbones of disadvantaged communities.