Zeros and ones appearing in a blackhole

New Media & Society special issue: Automated responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

Author Kathy Nickels
Date 1 March 2024

The New Media & Society journal has released its special issue: Automated Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic edited by Prof Mark Andrejevic, and Dr Christopher O’Neill from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) at Monash University.

This special issue examines the pandemic response as a mediated phenomenon – one that paired digital information technologies with automated logistical systems to address inter-related crises of circulation. 

In the logistical sphere, automated media were used to manage flows of people, commodities and even (in the case of ‘smart’ ventilation systems) air itself. In the media realm, automated systems played a role in circulating timely notifications and alerts and in detecting and responding to false information. 

This theme issue brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers focused on the analysis of automated control and response systems, including the networked devices and infrastructures that supported them, and the digital forms of data collection and processing they enabled. 

“The special issue brings together remarkable contributions from researchers across the ADM+S, said Dr Christopher O’Neill. 

“The breadth and rigour of this research make clear both the challenge of understanding how automation has changed in the wake of the pandemic, as well as the contribution that the ADM+S has made to this project.”

New Media & Society engages in critical discussions of the key issues arising from the scale and speed of new media development, drawing on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and on both theoretical and empirical research.

News Media & Society is a Q1 journal, ranked in the top 25 percent of journals for impact in the international research community.

Some themes that emerge from the special issue contributions, include:

  • the relationship between automation and the temporality of viral contagion, 
  • logics of pre-emptive intervention and 
  • forms of atmospheric and environmental control

Special issue contributions from ADM+S members:

SEE ALSO