how to contribute to “COVID-19 from the margins”

Thanks for your interest in contributing to the blog COVID-19 from the margins! Here you can find information about how to prepare your submission. Please read them carefully.

What we publish

  • We invite contributions engaging various forms of impact of COVID-19 on the Souths, including its economic, infrastructural and redistributional consequences in relation to the datafied society (e.g., surveillance, statistics, grassroots efforts to counter narratives). In particular, we seek to publish blog posts that explore such consequences and the ways people and communities across the Souths respond to them.

To be considered in the blog, your post should
1) explicitly reflect on one or more aspect of the datafied society at the time of the pandemic (e.g., surveillance, data production, data-based narratives, technological solutions or obstacles, data justice, data activism…).
2) explicitly take a human-centred perspective in exploring the consequences of the pandemic (e.g. how it is affecting people and communities on the ground, its impact on data privacy, redistribution of resources, access to key services, inclusion/exclusion from service provision…)

  • What is our definition of the South(s)? The South(s) is a composite and plural entity, including but also going beyond the geographical connotation (i.e., “global South”). In this understanding, the South(s) is a place of (and a proxy for) alterity, resistance, subversion, and creativity (Milan and Treré 2019, p. 235).
  • A standard retribution (€ 50) will be allocated to authors of accepted posts in the following categories: students, unemployed or precarious workers, in particular in the so-called Global South. Requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Please note that we are currently fundraising, and to date we have secured a retribution for the first twenty posts only.

How to prepare your manuscript

  • Length: between 600 and 1,200 words (max 1,500), blog style accessible to a wider audience. Longer posts might be published as a series of “episodes” linked to each other.
  • Please follow the blog stylesheet to prepare your manuscript. Don’t forget to include a title and a teaser, and a picture to accompany your post.
  • When ready, send to covid19blog@data-activism.net.