Conference Theme Track B: IS for Resilience

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Paper Number

2427

Paper Type

Completed

Description

During the COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing has become a major government effort to slow down the spread of the infectious disease. As societies started implementing contact tracing technologies, they encountered tensions between conflicting values involved in protecting human rights (e.g., freedom of movement versus health security). These tensions sparked a contestation process over the meaning of contact tracing technologies. Our study investigates how two societies, South Korea and Singapore, grappled with the meaning of contact tracing technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We frame our inductive findings by drawing on category research to build a theoretical model of the contestation processes around new technologies. We contribute to category research by showing how a societal value system involving conflicting values is invoked in contesting the meaning of new technologies. We unpack how category contestation is shaped by and shapes technology design and use, which, in turn, is shaped by societal power structures.

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02-Resilience

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Dec 12th, 12:00 AM

What does contact tracing really mean?: How governments and citizens contest the meaning of contact tracing to achieve societal resilience

During the COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing has become a major government effort to slow down the spread of the infectious disease. As societies started implementing contact tracing technologies, they encountered tensions between conflicting values involved in protecting human rights (e.g., freedom of movement versus health security). These tensions sparked a contestation process over the meaning of contact tracing technologies. Our study investigates how two societies, South Korea and Singapore, grappled with the meaning of contact tracing technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We frame our inductive findings by drawing on category research to build a theoretical model of the contestation processes around new technologies. We contribute to category research by showing how a societal value system involving conflicting values is invoked in contesting the meaning of new technologies. We unpack how category contestation is shaped by and shapes technology design and use, which, in turn, is shaped by societal power structures.

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