Analyze

I am a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. I am working on my doctoral dissertation that explores post-disaster ecological imaginary shaped and performed through data practices in post-Fukushima Japan. My project examines how data practices of citizen radiation detection activities construct and reconfigure the understanding and experience of citizen scientists regarding post-Fukushima “Japan” as part of the ecosystem.  For further projects, I am also interested in the sociocultural role of small data in the era of big data and how small data that represent and intervene in environmental issues are intersected and interacted with big data in various domains. 

I am currently participating in the Transnational Disaster STS COVID-19 project and the COVID-19 and Data group as a subgroup of the project above. As a member of these groups, I am unraveling COVID-19 data practices and the relationships among multiple data actors such as the government, research institutions, media, and citizen scientists in Japan. I am also interested in how differently citizen data platforms have been gaining scientific and political authorities in Japan, the U.S., and South Korea during the pandemic.

I am particularly interested in these questions: 

• What do different disciplines and communities involved in COVID-19 response mean by “good data”?

• How do local, national, and global data intersect, interact, and compete with each other? 

• What is shown and what is revealed or disregarded in COVID-19 data produced about different settings (a particular city, region, or country, for example)?

• How are COVID-19 GIS data integrated with other data forms? What is the role of the GIS data in different COVID-19 settings?

• What is the role of civic data as COVID-19 information in comparison to governmental or institutional data?

• What do people expect from data within the COVID-19 pandemic? 

• How is the data circulated for COVID-19 different from data produced in another pandemic period?

I can be contacted at inahk[at]uci.edu.

So the main 'slowdown' of the economy as well as the 'lockdown' of people appears to come to an end. It's been three exceptional months, as for instance emphasized by altered mobility patterns. (See https://www.covid-19-mobility.org/current-mobility/) However, what do we make out of this?

I would like to propose the following argument: The global health crisis of SARS-CoV-2 triggered a new public engagement with the polluted world produced and inhabited by humans. Media reports and preliminary scientific studies showed how pollution parameters decreased significantly and people visited public parks to a previously unknown extent. A debate on healthy clean air popped up, which was further strengthened by measures to contain the pandemic. Publicly discussed scientific studies suggest a correlation between COVID vulnerability and air pollution; and through hygiene measures, the mask has become popular as an object of protection, which in many societies was previously known primarily as protection against air pollution in public spaces. A few authors even claimed that air pollution should be indentified as a pandemic as well, a non-communicable pandemic with a significant toll.

We know perfectly well that air pollution is a slow disaster that is hard to account for. Threshold limits are not enough. The unequal consequences are not well appreciated, let alone translated into sufficient action. The pandemic experiences might help cherish clean air; it could help in producing clean and healthy air as a common good.

This is just a start, but I'm thinking about doing more research on that topic. One possible approach would be to discuss the "clean air experience" cross-culturally (like we do during the calls), while analysing and drawing on public (social media/media) discussions to enact clean air as a value. In turn, this could help bring pollution prevention and accountability to the forefront.

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. 

This concluding quote really summarizes the position of this article: "No one expects or requires major companies to take extraordinary measures to help their many stakeholders, but the bold and creative steps they take today to deliver immediate assistance will define their legacy tomorrow."

The author is managing director of FSG, a global social-impact consulting firm. He is lauding how acts of un-mandated CSR like Johnson & Johnson's pulling Tylenol off shelves or his own company's sliding-scale pay-cuts instead of layoffs are still talked about and used as cases in business school. He is using the "business case for CSR" line of argument to encourage companies to take steps such as giving their employees loans at a lower or no-interest rate, or doing the equivalent of "buying gift cards" from small suppliers. These actions, which don't even require any loss from the corporation, are portrayed as providing a huge boon to the company's reputation and employee loyalty, and still being above and beyond what is expected or mandated of corporations. 

The author opens with stating that the government's stimulus package is too little too late, which unfortunately is true, and then saying that the only option is for corporations to voluntarily engage in these primarily loan-based forms of assistance. 

• Misinformation: Platforms (Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, Apple App Store and Google Play app store): trying to curb misinformation and directing towards government sources of information.  Facebook giving WHO free ad space.
• "Matching" Donations: Google and Facebook pledge 7.5 and 20 million in matched donations respectively, to WHO
• Addressing price-gouging, [I'll need to look into this more] - Amazon
• At the beginning, tech companies led the work-from-home before it became mandated, and voluntarily closing stores was also protrayed as CSR
• App-supported delivery services adding non-contact options seems portrayed as social responsibility