Review for "Contact tracing apps for self-quarantine in South Korea: rethinking datafication and dataveillance in the COVID-19 age"

Abstract

Purpose: The first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was documented in China, and the virus was soon to be introduced to its neighboring country – South Korea South Korea, one of the earliest countries to initiate a national pandemic response to COVID-19 with fairly substantial measures at the individual, societal and governmental level, is an interesting example of a rapid response by the Global South The current study examines contact tracing mobile applications (hereafter, contact tracing apps) for those who were subject to self-quarantine through the lenses of dataveillance and datafication This paper analyzes online/digital data from those who were mandatorily self-quarantined by the Korean government largely due to returning from overseas travel Design/methodology/approach: This study uses an Internet ethnography approach to collect and analyze data To extract data for this study, self-quarantined Korean individuals' blog entries were collected and verified with a combination of crawling and manual checking Content analysis was performed with the codes and themes that emerged In the COVID-19 pandemic era, this method is particularly useful to gain access to those who are affected by the situation This approach advances the author’s understandings of COVID-19 contact tracing mobile apps and the experiences of self-quarantined people who use them Findings: The paper shows Korean citizens' understandings and views of using the COVID-19 self-tracing application in South Korea through examining their experiences The research argues that the application functions as a datafication tool that collects the self-quarantined people's information and performs dataveillance on the self-quarantined people This research further offers insights for various agreements/disagreements at different actors (i e the self-quarantined, their families, contact tracers/government officials) in the process of contact tracing for COVID-19 Originality/value: This study also provides insights into the implications of information and technology as they affect datafication and dataveillance conducted on the public This study investigates an ongoing debate of COVID-19's contact tracing method concerning privacy and builds upon an emerging body of literature on datafication, dataveillance, social control and digital sociology Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons com/publon/10 1108/OIR-08-2020-0377 © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited