2020
Grunsven, Janna
Perceptual breakdown during a global pandemic: introducing phenomenological insights for digital mental health purposes Miscellaneous
2020.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: COVID-19, digital ethics, value:health
@misc{Grunsven2020,
title = {Perceptual breakdown during a global pandemic: introducing phenomenological insights for digital mental health purposes},
author = {Janna Grunsven},
editor = {J. van den Hoven M. J. Dennis and Georgy Ishmaev},
url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09554-y#Sec4},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09554-y},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-09-01},
journal = {Ethics and Information Technology (2020)},
abstract = {Online therapy sessions and other forms of digital mental health services (DMH) have seen a sharp spike in new users since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having little access to their social networks and support systems, people have had to turn to digital tools and spaces to cope with their experiences of anxiety and loss. With no clear end to the pandemic in sight, many of us are likely to remain reliant upon DMH for the foreseeable future. As such, it is important to articulate some of the specific ways in which the pandemic is affecting our self and world-relation, such that we can identify how DMH services are best able to accommodate some of the newly emerging needs of their users. In this paper I will identify a specific type of loss brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and present it as an important concept for DMH. I refer to this loss as loss of perceptual world-familiarity. Loss of perceptual world-familiarity entails a breakdown in the ongoing effortless responsiveness to our perceptual environment that characterizes much of our everyday lives. To cash this out I will turn to insights from the phenomenological tradition. Initially, my project is descriptive. I aim to bring out how loss of perceptual world-familiarity is a distinctive form of loss that is deeply pervasive yet easily overlooked—hence the relevance of explicating it for DMH purposes. But I will also venture into the space of the normative, offering some reasons for seeing perceptual world-familiarity as a component of well-being. I conclude the paper with a discussion of how loss of perceptual world-familiarity affects the therapeutic setting now that most if not all therapeutic interactions have transitioned to online spaces and I explore the potential to augment these spaces with social interaction technologies. Throughout, my discussion aims to do justice to the reality that perceptual world-familiarity is not an evenly distributed phenomenon, that factors like disability, gender and race affect its robustness, and that this ought to be reckoned with when seeking to incorporate the phenomenon into or mitigate it through DMH services.},
keywords = {COVID-19, digital ethics, value:health},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {misc}
}
Online therapy sessions and other forms of digital mental health services (DMH) have seen a sharp spike in new users since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having little access to their social networks and support systems, people have had to turn to digital tools and spaces to cope with their experiences of anxiety and loss. With no clear end to the pandemic in sight, many of us are likely to remain reliant upon DMH for the foreseeable future. As such, it is important to articulate some of the specific ways in which the pandemic is affecting our self and world-relation, such that we can identify how DMH services are best able to accommodate some of the newly emerging needs of their users. In this paper I will identify a specific type of loss brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and present it as an important concept for DMH. I refer to this loss as loss of perceptual world-familiarity. Loss of perceptual world-familiarity entails a breakdown in the ongoing effortless responsiveness to our perceptual environment that characterizes much of our everyday lives. To cash this out I will turn to insights from the phenomenological tradition. Initially, my project is descriptive. I aim to bring out how loss of perceptual world-familiarity is a distinctive form of loss that is deeply pervasive yet easily overlooked—hence the relevance of explicating it for DMH purposes. But I will also venture into the space of the normative, offering some reasons for seeing perceptual world-familiarity as a component of well-being. I conclude the paper with a discussion of how loss of perceptual world-familiarity affects the therapeutic setting now that most if not all therapeutic interactions have transitioned to online spaces and I explore the potential to augment these spaces with social interaction technologies. Throughout, my discussion aims to do justice to the reality that perceptual world-familiarity is not an evenly distributed phenomenon, that factors like disability, gender and race affect its robustness, and that this ought to be reckoned with when seeking to incorporate the phenomenon into or mitigate it through DMH services.
Marin, Lavinia
Three contextual dimensions of information on social media: lessons learned from the COVID-19 infodemic Miscellaneous
2020.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: COVID-19, value:health
@misc{Marin2020,
title = {Three contextual dimensions of information on social media: lessons learned from the COVID-19 infodemic},
author = {Lavinia Marin},
editor = {J. van den Hoven M. J. Dennis and Georgy Ishmaev},
url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09550-2},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09550-2},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-08-26},
abstract = {The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied on social media by an explosion of information disorders such as inaccurate, misleading and irrelevant information. Countermeasures adopted thus far to curb these informational disorders have had limited success because these did not account for the diversity of informational contexts on social media, focusing instead almost exclusively on curating the factual content of user’s posts. However, content-focused measures do not address the primary causes of the infodemic itself, namely the user’s need to post content as a way of making sense of the situation and for gathering reactions of consensus from friends. This paper describes three types of informational context—weak epistemic, strong normative and strong emotional—which have not yet been taken into account by current measures to curb down the informational disorders. I show how these contexts are related to the infodemic and I propose measures for dealing with them for future global crisis situations.},
keywords = {COVID-19, value:health},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {misc}
}
The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied on social media by an explosion of information disorders such as inaccurate, misleading and irrelevant information. Countermeasures adopted thus far to curb these informational disorders have had limited success because these did not account for the diversity of informational contexts on social media, focusing instead almost exclusively on curating the factual content of user’s posts. However, content-focused measures do not address the primary causes of the infodemic itself, namely the user’s need to post content as a way of making sense of the situation and for gathering reactions of consensus from friends. This paper describes three types of informational context—weak epistemic, strong normative and strong emotional—which have not yet been taken into account by current measures to curb down the informational disorders. I show how these contexts are related to the infodemic and I propose measures for dealing with them for future global crisis situations.
Steinert, Steffen
Corona and value change. The role of social media and emotional contagion Miscellaneous
2020.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: COVID-19, societal impact, theme:value-change, value:health
@misc{Steinert2020,
title = {Corona and value change. The role of social media and emotional contagion},
author = {Steffen Steinert},
editor = {J. van den Hoven M. J. Dennis and Georgy Ishmaev},
url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09545-z},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09545-z},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-07-21},
abstract = {People share their emotions on social media and evidence suggests that in times of crisis people are especially motivated to post emotional content. The current Coronavirus pandemic is such a crisis. The online sharing of emotional content during the Coronavirus crisis may contribute to societal value change. Emotion sharing via social media could lead to emotional contagion which in turn could facilitate an emotional climate in a society. In turn, the emotional climate of a society can influence society’s value structure. The emotions that spread in the current Coronavirus crisis are predominantly negative, which could result in a negative emotional climate. Based on the dynamic relations of values to each other and the way that emotions relate to values, a negative emotional climate can contribute to societal value change towards values related to security preservation and threat avoidance. As a consequence, a negative emotional climate and the shift in values could lead to a change in political attitudes that has implications for rights, freedom, privacy and moral progress. Considering the impact of social media in terms of emotional contagion and a longer-lasting value change is an important perspective in thinking about the ethical long-term impact of social media technology.},
keywords = {COVID-19, societal impact, theme:value-change, value:health},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {misc}
}
People share their emotions on social media and evidence suggests that in times of crisis people are especially motivated to post emotional content. The current Coronavirus pandemic is such a crisis. The online sharing of emotional content during the Coronavirus crisis may contribute to societal value change. Emotion sharing via social media could lead to emotional contagion which in turn could facilitate an emotional climate in a society. In turn, the emotional climate of a society can influence society’s value structure. The emotions that spread in the current Coronavirus crisis are predominantly negative, which could result in a negative emotional climate. Based on the dynamic relations of values to each other and the way that emotions relate to values, a negative emotional climate can contribute to societal value change towards values related to security preservation and threat avoidance. As a consequence, a negative emotional climate and the shift in values could lead to a change in political attitudes that has implications for rights, freedom, privacy and moral progress. Considering the impact of social media in terms of emotional contagion and a longer-lasting value change is an important perspective in thinking about the ethical long-term impact of social media technology.
Klenk, Michael; Duijf, Hein
Ethics of Digital Contact Tracing and COVID-19: Who Is (Not) Free to Go? Miscellaneous
2020.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: active responsibility, COVID-19, digital contact tracing, digital ethics, fairness, SARS-CoV-2, value:health, value:justice
@misc{Klenk2020,
title = {Ethics of Digital Contact Tracing and COVID-19: Who Is (Not) Free to Go?},
author = {Michael Klenk and Hein Duijf},
editor = {J. van den Hoven M. J. Dennis and Georgy Ishmaev},
url = {https://ssrn.com/abstract=3595394},
doi = {https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3595394},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-05-28},
urldate = {2020-05-28},
abstract = {Digital tracing technologies are heralded as an effective way of containing SARS-CoV-2 faster than it is spreading, thereby allowing the possibility of easing draconic measures of population-wide quarantine. But existing technological proposals risk addressing the wrong problem. The objective is not solely to maximise the ratio of people freed from quarantine but to also ensure that the composition of the freed group is fair. We identify several factors that pose a risk for fair group composition along with an analysis of general lessons for a philosophy of technology. Policymakers, epidemiologists, and developers can use these risk factors to benchmark proposal technologies, curb the pandemic, and keep public trust.},
keywords = {active responsibility, COVID-19, digital contact tracing, digital ethics, fairness, SARS-CoV-2, value:health, value:justice},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {misc}
}
Digital tracing technologies are heralded as an effective way of containing SARS-CoV-2 faster than it is spreading, thereby allowing the possibility of easing draconic measures of population-wide quarantine. But existing technological proposals risk addressing the wrong problem. The objective is not solely to maximise the ratio of people freed from quarantine but to also ensure that the composition of the freed group is fair. We identify several factors that pose a risk for fair group composition along with an analysis of general lessons for a philosophy of technology. Policymakers, epidemiologists, and developers can use these risk factors to benchmark proposal technologies, curb the pandemic, and keep public trust.