The final assignment is a research essay examining the government responses to COVID-19.
To what extent can the Australian response to COVID-19 be understood as one or more of the following:
1. Social sorting
2. Panopticism
3. Surveillant assemblage
4. Surveillance Capitalism?
To answer this question you need to determine the extent and importance of these theories as a way of explaining and analysing the COVID-19 responses. We have focused on COVIDSafe App but you are free to focus on other aspects of the responses such as policing practices (though there is limited information on this), government directives (the regulations that create the new restrictions and offences) etc.
As this is a dynamic and unfolding development the research is likely to be drawn from media reports, but your task is to not only identify this content but to apply it to the theories.
For instance, COVID-19 clearly has social sorting dimensions but social sorting is not inherently ‘bad’, only potentially so. To what extent does the App for instance have the capacity to provide social sorting that is not inherently ‘bad’? Second, there are panoptic dimensions but is this the best way to understand COVIDSafe or other aspects of the pandemic responses? There are also dimensions of surveillant assemblages and to a lesser extent (currently) of surveillance capitalism (AWS is the holder of the data storage contract). At this point I do not see aspects of platform policing directly. There have been reports based on police body worn cameras but I have not seen reporting that suggests the kind of data analytics from platforms providing heat maps of offences for instance (though I do know that WA Police were given funding for the purchase of 100 ANPRs and 100 electronic ankle bracelets).
Word length – 2000 +/- 10%
Referencing should have two parts:
1. Academic references which at this stage will largely be on the theories. Some have already used additional references in assignments 1 and 2 and can continue to use these and potentially add to them. I anticipate around 5 academic articles
2. Media (broadly). There is a lot being written by journalists but also by academics providing opinion articles, and by NGOs providing brief insights or reports. It is pretty open. Again I expect at least 5 articles, but the actual number will be determined by article type, length and depth of analysis.