Pandemic platform governance: Mapping the global ecosystem of COVID-19 response apps
Dieter, Michael; Tkacz, Nathaniel; van der Vlist, Fernando; Weltevrede, Esther; Helmond, Anne
(2021) Internet Policy Review, volume 10, issue 3, pp. 1 - 28
(Article)
Abstract
This article provides an exploratory systematic mapping of the global ecosystem of COVID-19 pandemic response apps. After considering policy updates by Google Play’s and Apple’s App Store, we analyse all the available response apps in July 2020; their different response types; the apps’ developers and geographical distribution; the ecosystem’s ‘generativity’
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and developers’ responsiveness during the unfolding pandemic; the apps’ discursive positioning; and material conditions of their development. Google and Apple are gatekeepers of these app ecosystems and exercise control on different layers, shaping the pandemic app response as well as the relationships between governments, citizens, and other actors. We suggest that this global ecosystem of pandemic responses reflects an exceptional mode of what we call ‘pandemic platform governance’, where platforms have negotiated their commercial interests and the public interest in exceptional circumstances.
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Keywords: app store, platform governance, COVID-19, app studies, Communication, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Computer Networks and Communications
ISSN: 2197-6775
Publisher: Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society
Note: Funding Information: Published: 6 August 2021 Received: 21 March 2021 Accepted: 23 June 2021 Funding: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), grant number ES/V004905/1 (‘COVID-19 App Store and Data Flow Ecologies’), the Dutch Research Council (NWO), grant numbers 275-45-009 and VI.Veni.191C.048; and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), project number 262513311 (SFB 1187: ‘Media of Cooperation’). Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist that have influenced the text. Licence: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (Germany) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.en Copyright remains with the author(s). Funding Information: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), grant number ES/V004905/1 (?COVID-19 App Store and Data Flow Ecologies?), the Dutch Research Council (NWO), grant numbers 275-45-009 and VI.Veni.191C.048; and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), project number 262513311 (SFB 1187: ?Media of Cooperation?).Authors listed in alphabetical order. Thanks to Jason Chao and Stijn Peeters for their assistance in developing the Google Play and App Store scrapers for this study, and to Jason for uploading the Android application package (APK) files to the Internet Archive?s ?COVID-19_Apps? collection. Thanks also to Giovanni Lombardi, Angeles Briones, Gabriele Colombo, and Matteo Bettini (DensityDesign Lab) for their assistance with some of the graphics included in this article. Further, we thank those who participated in our data sprints during the 2020 Digital Methods Summer School (University of Amsterdam) and the ?Exploring COVID-19 app ecologies? (Aarhus University) and ?Mapping the COVID-19 App Space? workshops (Centre for Digital Inquiry). Finally, we thank the editors and reviewers, Michael Veale, Kaspar Rosager Ludvigsen, Angela Daly, and Fr?d?ric Dubois, whose constructive and attentive comments greatly improved the article.The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/wq3dr. Additionally, the available Android application package (APK) files of the COVID-19 Android apps covered in this study are openly available and preserved in the ?COVID-19_Apps? collection of the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/ COVID-19_Apps. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. All rights reserved.
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