by Erinne Paisley

During the COVID-19 global pandemic, we have all had to make signification adjustments to our daily lives. One of these is reading more news. This news contains an endless stream of data and it has been up to government bodies, health organizations, and journalists to sort through this data and create visuals for us to understand it.

These visualizations are critical for us to sort through the constant noise of data that the pandemic has created. COVID-19 has created a trend of data visualizing. However, like any other form of data visualizations, COVID-19 images such as “flatten the curve” are not completely objective. Data visualizations make visible certain perspectives and experiences, empowering and disempowering certain demographics. In the case of womxn, especially womxn of colour, historically these experiences have not been included. “Womxn” is used as an alternative to the English word “women” to include non-cisgender women.

A 2016 analysis of the Ebola and Zika global health emergencies explains: ‘The combination of pre-existing biological and socio-cultural factors means that while the health status of populations as a whole deteriorates during complex humanitarian crisis, women and children are especially vulnerable.’

D’Ignazio and Klein offer the term “feminist data visualizations” to describe those data visualizations that make visible women’s perspectives and experiences – and empower through this. Feminist data visualization is still not the mainstream way of sorting and presenting data. When it comes to data handling surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020 Wenham et al. explained that they:“are not aware of any gender analysis of the outbreak by global health institutions or governments in affected countries or in preparedness phases”.

As of early April 2020, many non-profits such as Plan International as well as academic think tanks like the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy have begun to offer support for womxn’s rights during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journalists, such as Helen Lewis of The Atlantic with her popular article “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism”, have also highlighted the experience of womxn. However, the lack of feminist data visualizations is evident.

To encourage and explore the importance of feminist data visualizations amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, I will look to two examples of female perspectives and experiences during this time, exploring specifically the pandemic’s impact on increased rates of domestic violence and decreased rates of global female education. I will also zoom in on examples of past feminist data visualizations of these two topics that could be used as jumping off points for health institutions and governments to conduct similar work during COVID-19.

Increased Rates of Domestic Violence

Domestic violence, also referred to as “intimate partner violence (IPV)”, is a “pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control over another partner in an intimate relationship”. Domestic violence is the most prevalent type of violence against womxn and, because of this, has been categorized by many scholars as a “global pandemic” of its own. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 3 women around the world have experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence.

This global public health problem has historically been unaddressed. This is because the “home” was regarded as “private” until the second wave of the feminist movement in the 1960s and ‘70s. During this feminist wave, slogans like “the personal is political”, created by Carol Hanisch, encouraged accountability for womxn’s rights both in the public and private realm. This included addressing issues such as the allocation of duties within the household, domestic violence, as well as other social and legal rights within womxn’s “private” lives.

During widespread public emergencies in the past, there has been a clear association between these events and rising rates of domestic abuse. For instance, after the New Zealand “Canterbury” earthquake in 2010, there was recorded 53% rise in domestic violence. Following Hurricane Katrina in the United States, there was also a near doubling in domestic violence rates in the affected areas.

Existing Feminist Data Visualization’s of Domestic Violence

In 2009, researchers at Harvard University created a computer model that automatically detects at-risk patients for domestic abuse. This program sorts through huge amounts of medical data from U.S. hospital emergency visits and creates data visualizations referred to as “risk gel” visuals for physicians to view. The bars are the patient’s medical history, specifically visits to a medical practitioner, colour coded based on the historical association of these injuries to domestic abuse.

This visualization of data allows for further prevention and attention to cases of domestic abuse by physicians. It is a form of feminist data visualization as it challenges the binary of one single visit to a doctor being marked as evidence of domestic abuse or not and instead tracks multiple visits on a scale of injury to create more narrative evidence of this abuse. This example of feminist data visualization may not be something that can be used directly to identify those at-risk of increased domestic violence cases during COVID-19 quarantining, but it serves as a strong example of how feminist data visualizations can reveal hidden narratives within existing data and support womxn’s rights.

At-Home Education Effect on Womxn

Most data visualizations of the COVID-19 pandemic mark the end of its effects as the eradication of the virus itself. Although this will be a significant turning point in the pandemic’s trajectory, from a feminist perspective this is in no way where the effects of the virus end – instead, where they begin.

As of April 2020, over 91 percent  of the worlds student population has had to stay home from school (UNESCO 2020). Following historical trends, the role of educating children in the home will fall on a majority womxn. Traditionally, womxn are still those who worldwide take the societal principle responsibility for children. This increased responsibility in the home may lead to detrimental effects for womxn’s own careers once pandemic-related quarantine has ended as male counterparts will have advanced further during the quarantine period due to less homeschool responsibilities.

Female children around the world face additional barriers to their educational, and eventually professional, progressions. Feminist data studies on the 2014 Ebola epidemic found that womxn still often have less decision-making power than men which results in less female students returning to school once the institutions are re-opened. Global studies have also shown that the longer a child is out of school the more likely they are to not return.

One of the main reasons for girl’s not returning to school is the increased rate of unwanted and transactional sex. A study by the United Nations Development Programme on the Ebola epidemic showed that teenage pregnancies in some communities of Sierra Leone went up by 65 percent because of school closures and increased sexual assault at home.

Feminist Data Visualization: Female Education Rates

In 2018, a number of American researchers experimented with data visualization as part of the annual February celebration of Black History. This challenge to “#VisualizeDiversity” resulted in a feminist data visualization submitted to the project by a researcher named “Sharon”, in 2018. The visualization took the data from the United States’ Department of Education fourth grade basic reading skills and re-organized the data.

The presentation of the data above shows a hidden narrative, that most minorities in America struggle to read at grade level and, more broadly, that there are systemic barriers that prevent these minorities from excelling in this way. This data visualization shows the potential of feminist data visualizations to reveal a narrative that the initial sorting of data may not have focused on. By re-sorting the data to focus on minority status, the data now goes beyond the categories of “literate” and “illiterate” and begins to show the multiplicity of reasons for these literacy levels. As well, the data visualization now acknowledges the historical exclusion of these marginalized groups in traditional hierarchical power structures.

Conclusions  

The COVID-19 global pandemic has led to a larger consumption of data visualizations. It is clear that data visualizations are needed not just for an understanding of the crisis at hand, but as instructions for what actions are the most crucial to take. The most viral data visualizations attached to the pandemic to date have focused on the spread of the virus itself – including images such as the “Flatten the Curve” and its accompanying #stayhome social media campaign. We must continue to question the objectivity of these viral data visualizations asking questions such as: When the curve ends – is this really the end of the pandemic’s impact? Is #stayhome really helping everyone stay safe?

So far, viral COVID-19 pandemic data visualizations have focused on a narrow perspective and largely exclude the experience and risks for womxn around the world. However, this also creates an opportunity for feminist data visualizations to rise in popularity. The world is watching for data visualizations, asking how to help, and supporting one another. It’s time to include womxn in this.

 

If you, or a womxn you know, are in need of immediate support during the COVID-19 pandemic, please consult the list of resources across Europe on the Women Lobby website.

 

About the author

Erinne Paisley is a current Research Media Masters student at the University of Amsterdam and completed her BA at the University of Toronto in Peace, Conflict and Justice & Book and Media Studies. She is the author of three books on social media activism for youth with Orca Book Publishing.

If a little bit of power is enough to show how someone really is, a global pandemic strips states as they are, shading light on their failings: transparency in the case of China, a smooth coordination between the national and the sub-national powers in Italy, or a guaranteed access to medical assistance for every citizen in the United States, to name a few. Argentina does not have an authoritarian China-alike system, nor the unpractical bureaucracy of Italy, and the public hospitals are open for everyone, as opposed to the US. So, what are the problems that Argentina is facing? What is the reason why the end of the lockdown is being constantly postponed, when countries like Spain or Belgium are already starting to regain some kind of normality?

 

by Nicolás Fuster

After taking office last December and as soon as the summer holidays ended in February, the government of Argentina had a rather abrupt end of the honeymoon. The pandemic had started on the other side of the globe. Then, it appeared in Europe. But for some reason, the news of the sudden arrival took the Argentine authorities by surprise. ‘I did not believe that the virus would arrive this soon’, the Minister of Health stated on the 9^th of March.

Ten days later, the President, Alberto Fernández, ordered a total quarantine. The decision found a wide consensus among the oppositions and the citizens, that used social media to foster the observance of the quarantine through the hashtag #QuedateEnCasa (‘Stay home’). Like people in many other countries, Argentines learnt to bake bread and cook cakes through Instagram and several famous musicians such as Pedro Aznar and Kevin Johansen performed live from their houses through Instagram or Facebook to help soothe the situation. Some of these home-made concerts reached peaks of almost 190.000 visualizations. As days went by, people also used social media, mainly through the hashtag #ArgentinaAplaude on Twitter, to organise for signing the national hymn and to cheer the medical staff with massive applauses during the evenings.

Mr. Fernández’s image was remarkably high, the NYTimes reported. He held several press conferences together with the mayor of Buenos Aires, who belongs to an opposition party, and this dialogue and agreement between them was appreciated by the citizenry, even if the long-term polarization does not seem to disappear. Following a statement to the governments by the UNHR High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, on the health and security of prisoners, by the end of April the news reported that because of COVID-19, some prisoners could leave the penitentiaries, which are often overcrowded, and which hygiene conditions are extremely poor. The possibility of giving house arrest to a number of prisoners, many of which were sex offenders and would have been sent close to their victims, if not the very same house, triggered a tough answer from the public opinion, and a strong cacerolazo (pot banging, an Argentine protesting method emerged during the crisis of 2001) was heard in the main cities on the 30^th of April. The response was truly intense, and Human Rights Watch stated that despite the reaction was understandable, sending prisoners to their places as a temporary measure does not mean to release them.

Impatience
Despite the calm style of the President, the sting of many announcements of the quarantine being extended started to unsettle many. Argentina has almost a half of its workers in the informal sector, and a number of them are day laborers, meaning that they buy provisions with their meagre daily earning. After a good initial answer to the measures by the authorities, it started to be clear that the quarantine was not an option for many, especially in the suburbs.

Argentina has a rather openness tradition and could not be labelled as a xenophobic country. However, due to COVID-19 (and to confused people), aggressions towards Asians and Italians were reported. Moreover, Argentines either infected or suspected to be infected received threatening messages through social media, where fake profiles were created in order to bully and insult some of the presumed infected.

Education
Teachers are laboriously organising classes through videos, WhatsApp and online platforms.

In order to supply the lack of classes, the Government sent a bill to the Congress for allowing teaching from afar. The bill was easily approved by the lower house and will be soon voted in the Senate. In April, the Ministry of Education announced the distribution of booklets as teaching material, co-financed with UNICEF, for students in vulnerable situations. Few days later, Carla Carrizo, an opposition MP, noticed that the booklets had a strong political content in favour of the national Government and detrimental to the other parties. 18 million booklets, that costed around € 4.000.000. “The first one to be educated should be the Ministry of Education. Instead of indoctrinating kids, we should be discussing how to raise critical minds”, Mrs Carrizo said. This was rejected by some media, for instance in this article.

The app
Like in other countries, the Argentine authorities launched an app for mobile phones, called CuidAr (‘To take care’, with a capital A that then combines ‘to take care’ with Argentina). The app has a triple function: allowing to self-diagnose, tracking the user and processing the circulation permission. At the beginning it was told that the app would be mandatory, later it was told that it would be mandatory in some provinces. This provoked some criticisms from experts, especially on Twitter. One of these, programmer and activist Javier Smaldone, said that the Government has not yet provided the source code nor the back-end in the server. Another IT expert, Maximiliano Firtman, argued that apart from not working well, the app lacks of the basic security standards: it is rather easy to pretend to be someone else, there is no option to edit nor revise the information and the Government could share the data with third parts, among other points. Eventually, the authorities decided not to make the app mandatory, but to leave it as it is.

Improvisation
During the last press conference where a new extension of the quarantine was announced, Mr Fernández said that ‘the quarantine will last for as long as needed’. When asked about the anxiety and anguish the lockdown could have on the people, the President, visibly irritated, replied that ‘what is distressing is getting infected’. This unleashed the controversy over the emotional aspect of the people during lockdown, the stress of the uncertainty of workers and owners of SMEs or the women who suffer domestic violence.

New cases of SARS-CoV-2 were recently reported in the so-called villas, the Argentine equivalent to Brazilian favelas, such as Villa Itatí, in the suburb of Buenos Aires, where 1/10 tests were positive. Within the capital city, this article shows that the cases of COVID-19 in the precarious settlements is 1/3 of the total cases. There is a number of extremely poor urban areas, where families live in the very same room, where social distancing is not an option, where alcohol hand gel is not a widely known item.

By mid-April, the WHO placed Argentina among the countries with less tests for COVID-19.

If, as argued, the first reaction of the authorities was appropriate, the last movements show some idea of improvisation. This sheds light on the fact that the decision of the quarantine should have been taken with a reopening plan, that after two months the Government does not seem to have.

“Comunitarism”
The lockdown and the delicate economic situation of the country, that has a 54 percent annual inflation rate, hit the most vulnerable. As soon as the quarantine started, Mosquito Sancineto, an actor and drama teacher of the underground scene of Avenida Corrientes -the porteña Broadway Av.-, set up Artistas Solidarios (Caring Artists), an NGO that receives donations, prepares bags with several items such as food for two weeks and cleaning products and distributes them among artists, that cannot work because of COVID-19.

Adriana Yasky, who is in charge of the logistics, says: ‘We have a bank account and we receive donations of $ 500 or $ 1.000 (€ 5 / € 10), sometimes more. We asked a nutritionist to prepare a list of foodstuffs, so we know that what we provide is healthy. We also give bleach and soap. In addition, we provide psychological support by volunteer professionals. A little idea of Mosquito is getting to be noticed thanks to social media: many famous artists such as Carla Peterson, who has over one million followers on Instagram, did a live with us. Others, like cartoonist Maitena, sent us their support. We have been contacted by other artists in the rest of the country who want to help, hence Artistas Solidarios is now working also in Mar del Plata. We use social media for everything: for asking for donations, for letting artists know that we are here to help. I am the one who reads the messages, then I make a table of the distribution, according to the requests of the week. A group goes to the wholesale supermarket and prepare the bags, and the guys with the cars deliver them. Donations are precious so we must spend wisely. We were lucky to find volunteers that, because of their jobs, hold the circulation permission! We deliver more than 100 bags each Saturday, and the number is increasing and increasing. All of this would be impossible without social media and WhatsApp.”

Digital activism
On the 3^rd of June 2015, there was the first massive demonstration against violence against women in Argentina, where Twitter, Facebook and Instagram played a role under the slogan #NiUnaMenos (‘Not one less’). Since then, the movement increased and crossed borders in Argentina and Latin America. It also arrived in Spain and Italy, under the slogan #NonUnaDiMeno. After five years of the first rally in Argentina, on this #3J digital platforms were essential again: activists launched a ruidazo (‘big noise’) mainly on Twitter and Instagram.

Next
So far, Argentines have followed the rules and have also shown creativity and respect. Now, the improvisation phase should be over. If politics have a vision, it ought to perform like actors do after months of rehearsing, when they know what the next scene will be like, when and how the play is going to finish.

 

About the author
Nicolás Fuster holds a BA in Politics and International Relations (University of Rome). He is currently writing his MSc thesis on voters of populist parties (University of Amsterdam). He intermittently writes for Argentine and Spanish newspapers.

 

Does the COVID-19 pandemic mark the birth of a new form of biopolitics? The Latin American case shows important departures from Europe and the United States, both in the adoption of surveillance technologies and in the types of biopolitical control enacted through them.

by Silvio Waisbord and María Soledad Segura

As the first pandemic in the datafied society, the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to reassess debates about digital communication and governability. At the core of these debates is the interest in understanding particular aspects of digital biopolitics – the ambitious efforts by governments and corporations to maximize knowledge and control of populations for political and economic power, as well as the vulnerability of democratic rights such as privacy and the right to know. In a recent article, Stefan Ecks (2020) concludes “we have never seen biopolitics on such a scale. 2020 is the birth year of radical biopolitics.”

Given our longstanding interest in the datafied society in Latin America, we are interested in assessing the applicability in the region of arguments about contemporary biopolitics in Europe and the United States. Even if it is early to draw categorical conclusions given that we are in the middle of the pandemic and its evolution and aftermath are unpredictable, there are indications that the current situation in the region does not match recent conclusions about the escalation of biopolitics.

At the time of this writing, Latin America has become the new epicenter of the pandemic with growing number of reported cases of infections and deaths. Various governments in Latin America (Perú, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, México, Colombia and Brasil) and the Inter-American Development Bank have deployed digital technologies to control the transmission of the virus and to support testing and tracing. They have collaborated with private companies and universities in setting up mobile applications for geolocalizing and contact-tracing possibly infected people. Expectedly, these actions have raised concerns about the negative impact of massive surveillance.

However, while we recognize the legitimacy of these concerns, the problem in Latin America takes different dimensions than in Europe, North America, and East Asia. For the moment, the governments in the region have significant problems to launch and maintain massive digital surveillance apparatuses. What stands in the way of pandemic-driven biopolitics is not a firm official commitment to protecting personal data or to balancing public health objectives and democratic rights. The obstacles are rather technological and institutional, namely, poor reach and limited effectiveness of digital and mobile technologies as well as deep-seated problems of state performance in terms of governmentality and the provision of health services in the region.  

Various factors shape biopolitics: government objectives, adequate bureaucratic systems to manage large-scale operations, accountability and transparency of mechanisms and policies, the reliability of digital platforms, and the current conditions of epidemiological surveillance in each country. None of these aspects in Latin America are comparable to the situation in most countries in the global North.  

Most national health systems suffer from chronic and severe deficits in the provision of services and the monitoring of populations. Health systems traditionally underserved large swaths of the population and have been chronically underfunded and unequal. Also, they have lacked effective government administrative systems to set up, conduct, and maintain massive monitoring based on health and other personal data. Underreported health data is common; in some countries such as Nicaragua, Perú and Venezuela, health authorities have not bothered even to report basic epidemiological data. Underreporting of cases is widely suspected. It is hard to imagine that suddenly health systems in combination with other government agencies would be set up well-lubricated apparatuses. Take, for example, the decision by Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro to terminate the agreement between telecommunications companies and the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication to provide information on mobile phones related to geographic location and mobilization. The decision was driven by Bolsonaro’s reckless pandemic policy than to concerns about data protection. His government has had an appalling performance since the beginning of the pandemic and it has flatly dismissed concerns raised by health experts (including his former Ministry of Health Nelson Teich) and the World Health Organization.

Official disinterest in mobilizing digital technologies to control the pandemic pales in comparison to the way that police, military and intelligence services in the region have historically approach communication and information technologies for securitization. Since the early decades of the 20^th century until recent military dictatorships and contemporary democracies, governments have developed surveillance technologies to control populations, often with funding and technical support from foreign countries. Recently, governments in various countries, including Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala, have beefed up surveillance technologies to spy on critics including human rights activists, politicians and journalists. Nowhere in the region did national governments show comparable interest in incorporating digital technologies to maximize biopolitics. The differences are quite telling and show different priorities and approaches to surveillance and population management.     

Another difference is that digital technologies do not provide significant results without a high rate of adoption of contact tracing and geo-localization applications via cell phones. Their usefulness to contribute to control the pandemic would be quite limited due to technological limitations, namely, the restricted availability of high-end cell phone equipment with Bluetooth and GPS and the unequal infrastructure of cell coverage in the region. Also, a well-functioning digital system would require relatively updated mobile phones, which is not the case among vast numbers of people, as civil society organization such as Derechos Digitales and Fundación Sadosky have observed. According to 2010 data, between 65 and 85% of households own mobile phones in Latin American countries, except for Cuba and Venezuela where numbers are lower. Although a more recent survey shows that 89% of Latin Americans have a cell phone and 47% a smartphone are used with prepaid plans. In addition, mobile phone services in many countries, such as Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela, are the targets of frequent complaints for poor quality, according to consumer rights protection associations.

Also, current health applications use considerable battery power and memory space, which would reduce people’s willingness to use them. That is why Apple and Google, the two largest providers of operating systems for cell phones, joined forces to address this issue. Nonetheless, it is not clear yet whether digital corporations will make certain applications available in older mobile phones which are common in the region. Finally, application malfunctions during the somewhat chaotic launch of COVID-19 in several countries have discouraged people from using them. Due to poor design, applications had many vulnerabilities. This was the case in Argentina in the province of San Luis, where national identity documents (including the processing code that is an authentication factor and the photo) were leaked, and in Buenos Aires where it is possible to access to the date of birth and address of any citizen.

In summary, the pandemic has prompted state-directed plans for monitoring COVID-19 prevalence in partnerships with digital corporations and universities, but their results are uncertain at the moment. It is not clear that they would achieve expected results. The obstacle is not a strong culture of privacy and data protection, but rather, chronic problems in government agencies to ensure that health systems have ample and quality coverage coupled with weak and uneven commitment to addressing the pandemic. In countries with serious infrastructure problems and insufficient funding for health services, it would have been surprising if governments had actively promoted data tracking to inform healthcare research and policy and fix intractable problems. Indeed, the spotty record of health systems in the region in responding to dengue, zika, Chagas and other infectious disease outbreaks in recent years suggests that government negligence and lethargy are not conducive to deploying massive digital-based monitoring and interventions.  

Knowing the scope of the disease implies collecting massive amounts of data on populations, improving reporting systems, and deploying state-of-the-art technologies – all tasks that demand the kind of government commitment that has been notoriously lacking in health systems in the region. Biopolitics assumes the willingness of states to know and roll out systems to track and control populations. On health matters, Latin American states have largely lacked the political will as well as human, economic and technical resources to know and act.

 

About the authors

Silvio Waisbord s a professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, USA.

María Soledad Segura is the director of the research team Sociedad civil y democratización de la comunicación y la cultura, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina.

The Peruvian tragedies are manifold. This blog post directs attention to one in particular related to the matter of counting during the pandemic. Although most of the debate focuses on how governments count the infected and the deceased, this post reflects on how the Peruvian state counts the living to protect their wellbeing – and how it fails to do so.

by Diego Cerna Aragon

The World Health Organization has recently declared that South America is the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Peru has the second largest number of registered infections in the region and is second only to Brazil, which however has almost seven times the population of Peru. Initially, the Peruvian government was lauded for its swift response and the implementation strict measures to halt the transmission of the virus. More recently, however, the country has been featured on the international press as a place where the expansion of the disease simply cannot be contained, despite the harsh restrictions imposed from early on. Stories of inner massive displacements and testimonies of the employment of Venezuelan immigrants to pick up dead bodies give an idea of how Peru is currently dealing with the pandemic.

Targeting in the midst of a pandemic

On March 19th – three days after decreeing a national state of emergency and quarantine – the Peruvian government announced that it was going to distribute a 380 soles subsidy (approximately 110 USD) to vulnerable households. The idea behind this plan was to offer some economic relief to people who had to stop working given the emergency measures. In a country where over 70 percent of the labor force is in the informal sector – meaning these workers are not included in any state or company payrolls and rely on self-employment and/or casual gigs – enforcing a quarantine meant that the majority of the working population had to give up its daily income and way of life.

The database from which the vulnerable household information was retrieved is in the hands of the Household Targeting System (SISFOH). As it was originally used to target poor and extremely poor households for the provision of social welfare benefits, this database was deemed by state officials capable to provide accurate information about which households would need financial assistance during the quarantine. Quickly, the public de turned into a debate of economic definitions: what is the meaning of being vulnerable? Who should be included in the registry to receive government assistance? As part of a well-disciplined neoliberal state, Peruvian national government agencies always strive to keep any kind of social spending as streamlined as possible. Yet as days went by, it became clear that the more than two million households initially targeted were not the only ones requiring assistance. Consequently, the government announced a new subsidy on March 26th, this time targeting “independent workers”.

The SISFOH database has one defining characteristic: it usually works under an on-demand logic. This means that unless a household requests to be evaluated to receive social welfare benefits, the system assigns a default socioeconomic classification based on cross-referencing information from other databases, such as census, property registry, and electricity consumption. Under normal circumstances, households in urban areas that do not request evaluation are not included amongst the recipients of social welfare benefits. In cases where a household requests to be evaluated, on the other hand, incertitude is the rule. Neither the applicants nor the local bureaucrats who work for the system know exactly how it operates, given that the classification algorithm is opaque to them. According to technocrats from the national government, this feature is intended to curb possible attempts to game the system. In the exceptional context of the pandemic, however, the government decided to test the accuracy of the database to target households in need. Unfortunately, it failed to provide a broad enough safety net. Later on, the government realized its mistake and the Minister of Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS) announced that eventually it would have to change methods and start actively evaluating households.

The failure to provide a lifeline to people in need did not go without consequences. By mid-April, a month after the quarantine began, people started leaving Lima, Peru’s capital and most populated city, because a thirty-days wait, they had not received any state assistance. They had depleted their savings, could no longer pay their rents, and were evicted by their landlords. Without anywhere to sleep and any money to buy food, many Peruvians started walking back to their hometowns in the countryside, given that all long-distance transportation was banned due to the emergency measures.

Additionally, another critical issue surfaced related to subsidy distribution. Given that less than 40percent of the adult population is integrated in the Peru’s banking system, a large portion of people could not receive the subsidy in a bank account. Rather, people had to go to bank offices to receive the subsidy in cash. Furthermore, many were confused about the multiple subsidy announcements made by the government and, given their uncertain situations, people went to the banks simply to inquire if they were going to receive subsidies. As later recognized by the government, the large concentration of people in banks proved to be a major vehicle of transmission for the novel coronavirus.

After repeated demands in social media, the government announced a new “universal” subsidy on April 23rd. Despite the name, the subsidy was not really universal. As President Martin Vizcarra explained, the distribution of this subsidy would be determined through “reverse targeting.” Still relying in part on the SISFOH database, this subsidy was projected to reach every household that did not have a member on state or company payrolls – 6.8 million households in total. Instead of acknowledging the limitations of targeting and opting for an actual universal subsidy, the government insisted on streamlining its social spending. On May 25th– 32 days after the announcement of the universal subsidy and 71 days after the quarantine started – the government indicated that so far 3.4 million households had received a subsidy, making it only half of the 6.8 million goal.

As it may be clear by now, the main problem of the Peruvian government is not the availability of funding – as every time authorities announce a new subsidy, they commit to increasing their spending. The main problem, this article argues, is leaders’ stubbornness in addressing the consequences of a public health crisis using technologies devised for poverty alleviation programs. Targeting technologies are designed to restrain spending, they are created to filter people. Moreover, in the case of the weak Peruvian state, they rely on irregular practices of information collection. Even before the pandemic, applicants to social welfare benefits and local bureaucrats complained about the stringent reasoning of the system and how its tools (e.g., forms) failed to grasp the material precarity experience by the citizens. A technocratic asset – the supposed rigorousness of the algorithmic method – was a woe for those in need. In short, these are technologies that, by design and implementation, render some people invisible.

Being visible in the Global South

Creative minds in the Western cultural industry have been prolific producers of dystopian fictions where state-like actors know every little detail about every member of the population. The case of Peru is quite the opposite: it is a state which barely knows its population. With tragic consequences, in particular in the middle of a pandemic. What we have witnessed – “invisible” people who do not receive any assistance from the state, walking for days to return to their hometowns, without having something to eat, without knowing if they are carriers of a deadly virus – seems like a real nightmare scenario.

Liberal anxieties in the Global North – sometimes rapidly adopted by educated elites in developing countries – have focused academics attention largely on issues of privacy. What terrifies them is being identified by state actors, probably because they do not want to be treated as their governments regularly treat the minorities in their countries. We already hear warnings on how everyone should be afraid of a “Chinese model” of surveillance, as if China was the only country to surveil its citizens. We will probably never see a protest sign reading “We want to be visible to the state!” And yet, millions of persons worldwide belong to the informal sector, a limbo-like domain where individuals participate in daily social and economic activities while not being completely integrated. This may function – precariously – as long as the economy keeps running but as soon as it stops – like during a quarantine – the downfall is catastrophic. Without being part of a state registry the help cannot arrive, at least not in an adequate and timely fashion.

In a context where many of the deaths remain unofficial and many people literally cannot eat because they are not counted, being visible to the state is a privilege.

About the author 

Diego Cerna Aragon is a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the program of Comparative Media Studies, and a research assistant in the Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab.

Even as activists and ethical technologists have been writing about and working on Personal Data and Privacy, the newer arena of Non-Personal Data (NPD) is very under-explored. What is the role of NPD in the face of a global pandemic like COVID-19? How do we deal with the possible economic exploitation of NPD, without any ethical bindings? This post looks at recent developments in dealing with Non-Personal Data in India, and the possible opportunities it provides in light of COVID-19. It argues for embedding public interest in working with NPD in India, a very urgent mission for activists and ethical technologists.

by Preeti Raghunath

The south-western Indian state of Kerala has been in the news for flattening the curve in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, raising the bar for public health interventions through proactive and informed policy stances. However, another storm was brewing through a few weeks in April and early May, with implications for the larger public health crisis. Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala questioned the state government on entering into a contract with a private firm, Sprinklr, which would be granted unhindered access to citizens’ health data. This led to petitions being filed in the Kerala High Court, with the judge pronouncing that the data of COVID patients with Sprinklr be anonymised. A couple of days before this post was written, the Kerala government told the High Court that the data had been transferred to a State-owned cloud space. While this incident, in the midst of a global pandemic, speaks to ongoing discussions on the data privacy and healthcare cybersecurity, it also highlights what is emerging as an important domain in data governance – that of Non-Personal Data.

Defining Non-Personal Data

There is no exacting definition of non-personal data yet in the Indian context, defined as it is by its nature of not being personal data. While the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 is before the Joint Parliamentary Committee, the Indian government has now instituted a panel to examine Non-Personal Data (NPD). Non-personal data is anonymized or pseudonymized data, bereft of the ability to be traced back to an individual. A recent report looked at economic rights in a data-based society. My concern in the remainder of this piece is to examine NPD as a public good, especially in the context of data ownership concerns, COVID-19 and the health sector in general.

Ownership and Public Interest

Non-Personal Data is often misunderstood to be big data alone. It may be part of big data stacks in form, but any kind of anonymized and pseudonymized data could be called NPD. It could exist in the form of big data or thick data, especially in the case of smaller enterprises and local commercial setups. Whatever be the form, NPD has immense value, especially in its potency to be exploited economically. Srinivas Kodali, an independent researcher on open data spoke to me about the new National Health Stack in India. He said, “The National Health Stack is essentially a plan by the Indian Big Tech lobby to push monetization of anonymized health data for profit. This often leads to the pushing of technology onto people through coercion.” He tweeted about how the Stack is less concerned with healthcare, and dwells more on technical aspects of the process of registering and signifying the individual into and as data. That Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder of Infosys, a big Indian technology firm heads the Committee formed by the Indian government, makes it difficult to dismiss concerns of the ownership of NPD and operationalization. That the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 renders the State powerful in allowing the pronouncement of national security as a means to access the private data of the individual, is no solace. In envisaging NPD as an economic asset, one must be wary of the collusion of the State and Big Tech in utilizing them for amassing profits.

COVID-19 and Non-Personal Data

Questions of data ownership and public interest are both normative ideals in any democratic policy process and its practice. In the case of NPD, it becomes imperative to advocate for it to be treated as a public good. The humanitarian concerns of the COVID-19 situation only accentuate and highlight the need to draw on these two ideals. The recent fracas in light of the security concerns of the Aarogya Setu mobile application and the Indian experience of trusting Big Tech with a public data-driven process like Aadhaar, India’s unique identification number system, only make a case for stepping up the advocacy for approaching individual and community data, both of which are non-rival and reusable, as public goods. Aadhaar is a biometric identity system put in place by the government to bring on board citizens. Aarogya Setu is an app that was put in place by the government to deal with medical data and diagnosis to do with COVID-19. Both the technology offerings have come under scathing criticism for evading privacy, relying on identity markers, exhibiting poor security architectures, and in general, being used by the government to control the population.

While writing this blogpost, the Indian government announced that it would be making the Aarogya Setu app open source; it remains to be seen it is a win for those championing privacy and security, once it opens up the source code to ethical technologists. However, this doesn’t take away from the app that it could still be misused. The recent case of the Tablighi jamaat controversy, which saw right-wing forces blaming the Muslim community as a whole for allegedly conspiring to spread COVID-19, is an example of how technology and apps could even be matched and combined to promote profiling of individuals on the basis of religion, caste, and other identity markers.

All this points to the larger practices of data management of NPD, in the face of COVID-19. For instance, practices of open data and sharing of datasets between civil society actors and small technology firms working with them could aid the process of promoting pertinent healthcare facilities, an opportunity that the opening up of the source code of the Aarogya setu app provides. Similarly, data standards need to be tuned in to commonly acceptable principles, since it could accentuate or diminish the complexity of the health situation at hand, just through the outputs that offer results for analyzing such data. Proponents of openness also suggest that research and literature on the pandemic, including scientific ones, need to be shared openly to accelerate finding new pathways to diagnosis and well-being. Next, working with NPD exclusively would mean that segregation and selection of data needs to be enabled, to account for the removal of personal data and associated concerns of privacy erosion. This would require proactive efforts from technologists and those in power to enable such maintenance of data for public usage, since there are efforts by liberal economists to sidetrack privacy concerns during times of the pandemic.

The Indian government must facilitate such processes, to engage with the larger community or activists, advocates, technology experts, innovators, and human rights proponents as well, in public interest. Caution must be shown in ensuring that working with NPD does not boil down to becoming an exercise in technocracy, and is instead an inclusive and open process. This must extend to the policymaking domain as well, with new pathways created for more deliberation. The two members of the panel for NPD, who represent civil society and academia, must work with the larger community of public interest advocates, to push for community and public ownership of data. India’s entrenched migrant crisis that has seen millions walking back home to villages from the cities they work in, and dealing with travel concerns of citizens showcase the fact that COVID-19 only warrants such an act of urgent advocacy in favour of public interest. Rapid datafication of livelihood and socio-economic processes in India would only serve Big Tech and the State, if we lose this opportunity now. 

About the author

Preeti Raghunath is an Assistant Professor at the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC), Pune, India. She works on global media policy, community media, regional/urban studies, human security, and transitional societies, with a focus on South Asia, using policy ethnography as a methodology. You can find more on her work at www.preetiraghunath.com. She tweets at @preetiraghunath.

The uncertainty of the pandemic has turned into an opportunity for the implementation of technological solutions to complex issues rather than an occasion to deploy coherent decision-making processes. During the social and economic crisis caused by COVID-19, the National Development Office of Colombia, set up an unconditional funding transfer system for three million citizens. The program, called Solidarity Income, was kickstarted in just two weeks. This post analyzes what kind of social policy is Solidarity Income, what are its problems for building a fairer society, and which is the role of technology and authoritarianism in this COVID-19 emergency context.

by Joan López

Ever since the 1990s, the Colombian social policy can be understood as liberal, because it is based on targeting resources on people below the poverty line. The Colombian state has created mechanisms to identify the poor people and bring to them the limited resources available. How is this approach evolving during the pandemic, and what is the role of “big” data in this process?

Different programs
The System of Possible Beneficiaries of Social Programs (known as Sisbén in Spanish) appeared as the main instrument to target social assistance. This system rates people with scores from 0 to 100 in terms of household prosperity. To grasp the difference between Solidarity Income and more traditional social policies, we should understand how the allocation of a social benefit worked in terms of the data used to identify the beneficiaries.

Sisbén‘s targeted social programs used an examination of the conditions of each household in which citizens were considered actors in data production. The score emerged from an institutional effort to virtually search for vulnerable populations through surveys in impoverished areas. Depending on the score received, families are eligible for social programs implemented by different state agencies. The minimum score to be eligible varies across agencies, and is set independently by each program.

The Solidarity Income set up in response to the pandemic has changed the relationship between the data used to assign a benefit and the participation of people in the system. The response to the COVID-19 crisis was an experiment that involved using as much data as possible to find people who needed the subsidy but were not yet receiving other social programs. The program built a new Master Information Database, in which the National Development Office (NDO) “mixed” all kinds of administrative records, using data collected for diverse purposes and managed by private and public actors alike. These databases have quality levels, and the existence of some was even unknown to many Colombians. I argue that it is no longer a matter of finding vulnerable people in the areas affected by poverty but of taking advantage of the personal data that Colombian citizens provide in their interaction with different institutions.

The experiment ended up opening the “Pandora’s box” of the Colombian government information systems and showing its dependence on the private sector. Furthermore, the approach has appeared broken from the start: when the NDO published the list of beneficiaries, many citizens reported inclusion errors regarding non-existent and expired ID cards.

The unilateral decisions

The NDO’s response was to dismantle the database and deliver it to the National Civil Registry in charge of the national ID system for deduplication. This process resulted in nearly 17,000 records with inconsistencies, as reported on the media . After the incident, the NDO assured that the errors did not matter because the banks verify the identity of the recipient before making a transaction. Also, in the case of communities with no access to financial services, the public agency used databases of the prisons and the Forensic Medicine Institute to deduplicate IDs that were marked in those databases as deceased. This situation made clear that the state registries have serious quality problems and expose an approach to public policy that exploits databases indiscriminately.

In addition, these targeting practices imply a form of violence for individuals and families who are left out. We will never know how many people were unfairly excluded in the crosschecks with databases of uneven quality. However, we can analyze the narrative behind the Solidarity Income initiative. The bureaucracy is using these data-intensive solutions to avoid a political discussion that involves deciding who should be eligible for social redistribution in a time of crisis, what are the life consequences for the excluded, and what alternatives they might have. For example, the selection of beneficiaries in the South of the country, considering the high levels of poverty, unemployment, informality, and inequality, are the results of arbitrary data-based mechanisms. Why did the NDO draw a line between potential beneficiaries in a pandemic on 8.7 million families when there are 17 million at risk of falling into poverty? This question requires a political discussion that however is dependent on transparency and participation.

Silencing dissenting voices through data
The design of Solidarity Income makes it impossible for citizens to reclaim their rights. People will hardly be able to request that information be corrected, obtain information on decision procedures, and make a claim to challenge the results. What’s more, the system does not allow its potential beneficiaries to actively participate in the construction of the social policy that gives them agency in an emergency crisis. This is why I contend that with its recent initiatives the Colombian state is taking away people’s agency to demand their social rights and actively participate in the political discussion shaping them. Moreover, Solidarity Income is based on a wrong assumption: data does not faithfully correspond to the reality but is the representation of the politics of government and, most importantly, of the social inequalities that shape it. Communities in poverty could be easily invisibilized or misrepresented by that system.

Technocrats are hiding behind data and technological solutions to deny people the agency to participate in the state’s decisions, to claim injustice, and to claim the protection of their social rights. They reportedly dismiss citizens’ complaintsas “myths” or deny the agency of the citizens that denounce that they do not need subsidies because the databases do not lie. The official line has been in fact that “there are no mistakes”. In other words, Colombians are facing a government that unilaterally claims to know the people in need and denies their participation in the process. The government even points out how wrong the dissenting voices are: “they are being manipulated” or “they want to skip the line”. In short, it is about using technologies and data to avoid having political discussions.

In sum, Solidarity Income is an example of the gloomy future of social policy in which people have fewer mechanisms to reclaim their rights vis-a-vis the State. It is also evidence that the real beneficiaries will emerge from the data that Colombian citizens are inadvertently leaving and not as a result of an exercise in active citizenship. The Colombian government might be selling the program as an innovation, but it is nothing more than a large-scale experiment in rolling out a data-intensive social policy scheme that allows the state to “automatically” determine, through third-party data and in a non-transparent way, who deserves welfare support. Unfortunately, this is a policy designed to eliminate (so-called) inclusion errors, rather than for including citizens with agency. And this dark system will use as much data as possible to find the fewest possible beneficiaries.

About the author

Joan Lopez is a researcher in privacy and public policy at the Fundacion Karisma, a Colombian civil society organization that promotes human rights and social justice in digital environments. He is a historian and student of a master’s in sociology at Bielefeld University in Germany. Joan@karisma.org.co

To know more

Lopez, J. (2020). Experimentando con la pobreza: El Sisbén y los proyectos de analítica de datos. Bogotá: Fundación Karisma.

 

 

[EN] Mother’s Day is the symbolic anniversary for the Mexican desaparecidos’ mothers. During that occasion they protest and show their anger and pain in front of the institutions and national and international public opinion. This posts highlights their efforts to reaffirm the need for justice and truth during the coronavirus pandemic, and to protest while obliged to stay at home and maintain social distancing.

[ES] Cada 10 de mayo, durante el Día de la Madre, miles de madres mexicanas manifiestan en las calles y en las plazas por sus hijas e hijos desaparecidos. Debido a la pandemia, este año tuvieron que organizar la “Marcha de la Dignidad Nacional” de manera diferente. Pero ¿cómo lo hicieron? ¿Qué papel cumplió la tecnología?

by Thomas Aureliani

La propagación del coronavirus y las medidas restrictivas implementadas por los gobiernos de todo el mundo están teniendo un fuerte impacto en las formas de movilización. En México, las medidas de distanciamiento social y la interrupción de muchas actividades “no esenciales” están impidiendo que muchos familiares de desaparecidos salgan a buscar a sus seres queridos y a expresar públicamente su ira y dolor. Además, la cuarentena parece haber causado una disminución del trabajo, ya muy retrasado e ineficaz, de las instituciones encargadas de desarrollar las investigaciones y de la búsqueda de los más de 61 mil desaparecidos reconocidos oficialmente por el gobierno de Andrés Manuel López Obrador. De hecho, el país está experimentando una crisis humanitaria sin precedentes debido a la llamada “Guerra contra el Narcotráfico”, inaugurada por el expresidente Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) y continuada por el gobierno de Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018). La violencia vinculada a la militarización de la seguridad pública, el narcotráfico y los enfrentamientos por el control de territorios ricos en recursos estratégicos han despoblado enteras regiones de México. Muchos de estos territorios están sujetos al poder de las organizaciones criminales paramilitares que operan de forma autónoma o con la colaboración de las instituciones estatales, exacerbando los niveles endémicos de corrupción e impunidad que ya caracterizaban al país latinoamericano. Estos conflictos han causado más de 250 mil asesinatos en 12 años y una serie de violaciones de los derechos humanos, como por ejemplo las ejecuciones extrajudiciales, torturas y, de hecho, desapariciones. Estas últimas son perpetradas por agentes estatales y organizaciones criminales, y las víctimas pueden ser personas con o sin alguna militancia social o política, sospechosos por cualquier circunstancia o señalados por funcionarios públicos de los diferentes gobiernos de pertenecer a bandas del crimen organizado. Las desapariciones pueden afectar indistintamente a hombres y mujeres, niños y niñas, personas indígenas, campesinas, estudiantes, migrantes, defensores y defensoras de los derechos humanos, e incluso funcionarios estatales.

Resistencia civil

En respuesta a este contexto de violencia se han desarrollado diferentes formas de resistencia civil, movimientos, asociaciones y redes dedicadas a la defensa de los derechos humanos de las víctimas y de sus familiares. El 10 de mayo de 2012, el Día de la Madre, colectivos de familiares y organizaciones civiles del Noreste del país convocaron por primera vez la “Marcha de la Dignidad Nacional, Madres buscando a sus hijos e hijas y buscando justicia”, que se convirtió en el evento colectivo más importante para los familiares de los desaparecidos, especialmente para las madres. Año tras año, más y más madres, padres, hermanas, hermanos, hijos e hijas, abuelos y abuelas se han unido a esta marcha. Se han agregado también los comités y asociaciones de familiares de los desaparecidos de la “Guerra Sucia” de los años ’60 -’70 -‘80, décadas en las que el estado autoritario mexicano hizo desaparecer a los activistas políticos, estudiantes y trabajadores que se oponían al régimen. Pero no solo eso: cientos de asociaciones, ONG y organizaciones internacionales dedicadas a la protección de los derechos humanos como Amnistía Internacional, la asociación italiana antimafia “Libera”, la Cruz Roja Internacional o la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos cada año se unen a las voces de las madres.

El impacto simbólico del evento es muy fuerte: las madres se reúnen y manifiestan que el 10 de mayo no hay nada que celebrar. Los 10 de mayo ellas desfilan con fotos de sus desaparecidos impresas en las playeras o en grandes pancartas. La gran mayoría de las madres todavía no ha encontrado a sus seres queridos y esperan tanto la verdad como la justicia y la reparación integral de los daños causados por la desaparición de sus hijos y hijas. Muchas madres sufren por la cuarentena porque no pueden salir, armadas con palas y rastrillos, a excavar en los territorios donde suelen encontrar fosas clandestinas y donde se supone que hay miles de cuerpos abandonados o restos humanos. No pueden seguir presionando a los órganos de gobierno y justicia, no pueden participar en las reuniones, conferencias, cursos de capacitación para aprender cómo buscar. Y sufren porque este año la Marcha no se ha podido organizar.

Por este motivo, el Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México ha organizado una gran movilización digital durante la pandemia. Cabe señalar que el Movimiento se creó en marzo de 2015 con el propósito de redactar la la primera Ley General en materia de desapariciones en México, y hoy reúne a cientos de colectivos de familiares y organizaciones civiles que luchan por la correcta implementación de la misma Ley (las historias y actividades de estos colectivos, así como las noticias sobre el Movimiento se pueden encontrar en el sitio web). Con los años, el Movimiento se ha convertido en el principal referente nacional sobre el tema de las desapariciones a través de la presión política y de las manifestaciones públicas.

Marcha digital

Gracias al apoyo de algunas organizaciones civiles con mayor experiencia en el campo del activismo digital, el Movimiento ha impulsado muchas campañas a través de las redes sociales donde exige búsqueda efectiva de los desaparecidos, verdad, justicia y no repetición de los hechos criminales. Una de las primeras y más simbólicas campañas fue el lanzamiento del hashtag #SinLasFamiliasNo, que tenía el propósito de señalar la necesidad de involucrar a los familiares de víctimas en los procesos de redacción y implementación de la Ley a nivel federal y local. La participación activa de ellos siempre ha sido una piedra angular del Movimiento: muchos familiares se han convertido en activistas y defensores de los derechos humanos reconocidos a nivel nacional e internacional.

Este año la Marcha se ha desarrollado necesariamente en forma digital con el objetivo de “tomar las redes sociales”, igual que las calles y las plazas durante todos estos años de lucha: con dignidad, fuerza y un amor incansable. Las familias quieren decir que a pesar del coronavirus no se detiene ni su necesidad de justicia ni la búsqueda de los desaparecidos. Añaden también que México sigue viviendo una emergencia humanitaria en la que hay miles de cuerpos no identificados esperando de ser nombrados y devueltos a sus familiares. En un comunicado, el Movimiento ha invitado a todas las personas solidarias a enviar o publicar en redes sociales su propia imagen usando un cubrebocas con la leyenda: “¿dónde están?”; videos mensajes o piezas artísticas utilizando el hashtag #CorazonesEnMarcha. La movilización digital tuvo mucho éxito: miles y miles de mensajes, vídeos y fotos inundaron la red y contribuyeron a sensibilizar a la opinión pública y a visibilizar la tragedia. Las fotos de perfil se actualizaron con el motivo creado por el Movimiento.

Muchas madres compartieron con orgullo las fotos de sus hijos e hijas como ocurre cada año. Desde diferentes estados de la República, publicaciones con fotografías y música producidas por muchos colectivos se publicaron en Facebook, Twitter e Instagram. Manifestaciones de solidaridad vinieron también de ciudadanos comunes, mexicanos y extranjeros, y de organismos internacionales como Amnistía Internacional, la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos, el Comité contra las Desapariciones Forzadas y el Grupo de Trabajo de la ONU sobre las Desapariciones Forzadas o Involuntarias. Además, se volvieron virales hashtags como #YoApoyoParaEncontrarles, #HastaEncontrarles, #NosHacenFalta y #10DeMayoNadaQuéCelebrar. Esta forma particular de movilización digital ha demostrado una vez más la fuerza de estos familiares, de las madres en particular: ellas no se detienen. Ni siquiera el virus más letal podrá detener sus espíritu de lucha y sus necesidad de justicia. Porque cómo siempre ellas dicen: ¡Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos!

 

Bio. Estoy terminando mi doctorando en “Estudios sobre Criminalidad Organizada” en la Universidad de Milán con una tesis sobre la movilización de los familiares de desaparecidos en México. Además, colaboro con el Observatorio sobre la Criminalidad Organizada – CROSS de la misma Universidad. Durante varios años he estudiado y investigado la situación mexicana y las formas de resistencia civil a la violencia que existen en el País. He desarrolado mi trabajo de campo en Coahuila (México) y Ciudad de México el año pasado, entrevistando y recolectando historias de vida de los familiares de personas desaparecidas del colectivo “Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Coahuila y en México – FUUNDEC-M”

Correo electrónico: thomas.aureliani [at] gmail.com
Twitter: @ThomasAureliani

COVID-19, an epidemic that emerged in Wuhan city, has been always entangled with information censorship since the very beginning of it being detected in China. The Internet has witnessed a battle between censorship towards criticism and investigative reports, as well as supported various forms of resistance such as organizing group-documentation on GitHub and creating alternative new media projects. In this crisis, we see how citizens, journalists, and activists are brought together by digital networked communication to fight for the rights to be informed with accurate information.

by Anonymous Contributor

COVID-19, an epidemic that emerged in Wuhan city, has been always entangled with information censorship since the very beginning of it being detected. During the last week of December 2019, doctors in Wuhan, including Dr Li Wenliang who became known as the virus whistleblower, used their personal social media accounts to sound the alarm about the rapid spread of the unknown disease. Their attempt was stigmatised by local authorities as “spreading rumours and misinformation”. This is why even at the times of COVID-19 the Chinese internet witnesses a battle between censorship and various forms of resistance whereby Chinese citizens and journalists deal with the censored content and fight for the rights to be informed with accurate information by using digital networked communication. This creates a temporal “us” against the authorities state.

Nick Couldry offers a critical reflection on the ways in which digital networked communication forms solidarity——what he termed as “the myth of us” (2014). He argues that timescale matters as one of the social conditions of political changes, because networked action has provided effective means for disrupting government surveillance and the accessibility accounts for quick and massive mobilization. Yet, the long-term contexts that guarantee sustainable individual action in and through networks are missing. The author also says that it is too early to conclude that digital networks function as a process of autonomous communication. Nonetheless, Couldry does not deny the potential of political change that the use of digital networks in recent social movements might give rise. We can think of how COVID-19 outlined and amplified the problems of internet censorship in China, which triggers various ways of resistance that could become legacies for activists and citizens even after the crisis.

GitHub: A new frontier of data activism

The individual and collective documentation of COVID-19 reports on the software repository GitHub reveal a form of data activism as a novel frontier of media activism, as Milan argues (2017). It is a re-active action enacted by technological experts who used web crawling or other data collection processes to transfer the related reports and published articles published to the repositories, racing against the speed of the censorship.

“Terminus2049”, an online crowd-sourcing project relying on GitHub, was set up in 2018 to archive articles that were censored from mainstream media outlets and social media such as WeChat and Weibo. As stated in its GitHub page, the project’s slogan is “no more 404”, where 404 is the error code indicating that a server could not find the requested page. It functions as a site of resistance towards the state censorship on media content. During the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, Terminus2049 also archived and documented various reports and articles that had been censored or removed, including a serious of in-depth reports questioning Wuhan local government’s early-stage reaction to the coronavirus published by Caixin Media. On the 19^th of April, three volunteers from Terminus2049 went missing in Beijing and were presumed to be detained by the authority. However, Terminus2049 is not the only project on GitHub that is involved in crowdsourcing documentation of coronavirus memories. Similar projects such as “2019ncovmemory” (which has already set their archive to private to avoid risks),“womenincov” (which features recordings of female medical staff and issues related to domestic violence), and “workerundervirus” can be also found on GitHub.

How does GitHub become a platform for Chinese citizens and activists to preserve counter-narratives and to make sense of the accountability and legitimation of the government? To begin with, the software development website GitHub is accessible in China for its function of code-sharing. The platform gained its visibility outside the developer communities because of the Anti-996 Movement in 2019, initiated by Chinese programmers to protest again the excessive working conditions in tech companies. As part of the movement, the “996.ICU” project was devoted to complying a list of companies that follows a 996-working schedule (from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week) and its repository has quickly become one of GitHub’s fastest-growing repositories. After mainstream media’s reporting and the wide-spread discussion about 996-working culture in China, the movement has brought people’s attention to GitHub itself as a suitable site for civic participation and a tactical choice for organizing contemporary activism in China, given its capacity to be operated both within and beyond “the Great Firewall”.

The explosion of creativities on social media

Yet, I am not arguing that GitHub is the only online space to contain Chinese citizens’ memories of coronavirus and their strong demand for transparency and accountability. In fact, social media accelerates cycles of action and protest and have the ability to produce new forms of collectivity.

What amazed me the most is how citizens creatively and collectively express their anger, discontentment, and solidary in spreading an interview of Dr Ai Fen on social media platforms. On 10^th March, Renwu Magazine published an article titled “The one who gave out the whistle (发哨子的人)”—an interview with the head of Emergency Department in Wuhan Central Hospital, Dr Ai Fen, featuring her allegations that she had been reprimanded by superior officials after attempting to warn her colleagues on the novel virus and her experiences in the emergency department for the past two months. The article was quickly removed. However, censorship failed to silence the public. Citizens have started their own ways of preserving and spreading the article:  from screenshots, replacing words with emojis, and formatting the article vertically instead of horizontally, to more creatively using a serious of QR codes, using fictional languages such as Klingon and Sindarin, using Morse code and computer science encoding system Base 64. Chinese social media platforms were turned into battlefields against the censorship. As communication scholar Kecheng Fang commented to BBC, it was a ceremonial event that connected individual citizens who share similar values and led to the formation of solidarity.

Alternative/Artistic new media projects

The creativities in this event bring forth the possibilities of adapting alternative or artistic activism, which is often recognized by its ability to slip under the radar and not be identified as “politics” to authorities, while still being able to communicate a social message. As Leah Lievrouw points out, besides citizens’ active engagement in spreading censored content regarding coronavirus on social media platforms, activists have incorporated the concept of memories into creating alternative and activist new media projects.

“Unfinished Farewell” is a new media project that offers a pace for people to release their grief and for the public to mourn, directed by visual designer Jiabao Li and Laobai Wu. By collecting help-seeking posts and heartbreaking stories of losing the loved ones from accounts on different social media platforms, the project addresses individual stories to form counter-hegemonic narratives. It invites the visitors to reflect on a question: “after this pandemic, who can remember the pain of someone like my mother who had nowhere to seek medical treatment, being refused by the hospital, and died at home?” There is a need to document similar tragedies as evidence in terms of seeking accountability after the crisis, and this project set the urgency for such a need in an emotionally powerful way of presenting the visualization of information of the lost lives.

“Qingming, A Sculpture of Resilience” has appeared online. Qingming Festival, which is also known as Tomb-sweeping Day, is a day to mourn and commemorate ancestors and the lost loved ones. Because of the pandemic measurements, people in China were unable to visit graves in this year’s Qingming Festival and online tomb-sweeping applications were used as an alternative. However, the project is not created for tomb-sweeping. It invites you to virtually join a counter-clockwise walk in front of the Hongshan Auditorium in Wuhan. It aims to transform the trajectories left by visitors into an online monument, which represents a collective will of remembering how the officials were trying to silence the alarms on the existence of coronavirus in Wuhan, presumably related to making sure the success of holding the “Hubei Two Sessions” at Hongshan Auditorium. As strongly stated in the website, “We shall never forget our pain and tear. Neither should we stop examining the systematic problems exposed during the crisis, the strive for a better future”. Despite that the state’s regulations and the pandemic measurements prohibit citizens to gather physically in front of Hongshan Auditorium in Wuhan, the project records an artistic form of protest online.

The political environment and the strict monitor and censorship voluntarily conducted by corporated social media platforms in contemporary China hamper the possibilities for organizing physical protests or forming grassroots collectives. The COVID-19 crisis has triggered an intensity that lasts for months in everyday life, but it also nurtured creative and alternative ways of resistances that could go beyond the restriction of holding protests physically. Despite that fact that one should be cautious about not mistakenly assume that the forms of collectivity in the crisis can represent the whole social picture, I would like to believe the diverse forms of resistance towards censorship will be able to maintain and evolve into the future.