Progress

Progress 

So far, the project has further developed the concepts of digital politics (i.e. mainly through deepening understanding on 'imaginaries'). Empirically, it has started to produce results relating to two interrelated areas (by 'interrelated' we mean: in a networked form, operating within, across and outside of national boundaries):

The first concerns the role played by data protection (or: privacy) by design for the closure of public controversies, in Norway and elsewhere in Europe (mainly France, but also in Latvia). 

We have detected shifts to: 

1) notions of digital sovereignty 

2) notions of privacy

3) configurations of public and private. 

These shifts are mainly enabled through the incursions of large technology corporations such as Apple and Google, and their GAEN joint framework.

The second concerns the embedding of digital preparedness within the national governance of digital health infrastructures. This is also reflected in continued efforts to digitalise activities across the health care services of Norwegian municipalities.

The means through which these developments have been tracked are: 

1) document studies (mainly policy and technical literature, including DPIAs)

2) a one-day workshop with centrally involved actors within public health and privacy protection in Norway

3) observations of public debates. Results exist as project reports (i.e. data protection analysis, workshop report) and as academic publications. These are in various stages of publication, from submitted manuscripts to works in progress

Activities

2022

• Kick-off meeting for project participants and advisory board in Oslo. 02-03.02.22
• The project's postdoctoral fellow, Gernot Rieder, and it's PhD candidate, Johannes Andresen Oldervoll, were hired in the first quarter of 2020.
• Rommeveit, Kjetil: Pandemifrokost #8. Rommetveit presented CoPol at this event, which is part of a series of monthly seminars organized by the interdisciplinary Pandemic Center at the University of Bergen. Christie café, Bergen 20.05.22
• Rommetveit, Kjetil and van Dijk, Niels: Panel -  Design-based responsible digital innovation? (external link) during the workshop Responsible Research and Innovation in/under Urgency (external link), Athens, Greece 03.06.22
• CoPol reading seminar discussing Jasanoff, S. and Kim, S.-H. (Ed.) (2015). Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press. Chapters 1 & 15, June 2022.
• CoPol reading seminar discussing Milan, S. (2020). Techno-solutionism and the standard human in the making of the COVID-19 pandemic. Big Data & Society 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720966781 (external link). October 2022
• CoPol reading seminar discussing Bruno Latour's political philosophy. November 2022
• CoPol reading seminar discussing van Dijk, N. (forthcoming 2023). Constitutional Ecology of Practices. Bringing Law, Robots and Epigrams into Latourian Cosmopolitics.  Perspectives on Science 31(1). https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00585 (external link). November 2022

2023

• CoPol reading seminar with guest researchers Prof. Barbara Prainsack, University of Vienna, and Ass. Prof. Katerina Sideri, Panteion University, discussing Sideri, K. and Prainsack, B. (2023). COVID-19 contact tracing apps and the governance of collective action: Social nudges, deliberation, and solidarity in Europe and beyond. Policy Studies. Januar 2023 44. https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2022.2130884 (external link)
• CoPol reading seminar with guest researcher Dr. Johannes Thumfart, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, discussing Thumfart, J. (2021). "The Norm Development of Digital Sovereignty between China, Russia, the EU and the US: From the Late 1990s to the COVID Crisis 2020/21 as Catalytic Event." In: Hallinan, D., Leenes, R. & De Hert, P. (Ed.). Data Protection and Privacy, Volume 14: Enforcing Rights in a Changing World. Oxford; London: Hart Publishing. Mars 2023.
• Digital consortium meeting with article presentations from Heidrun Åm, Niels van Dijk, Johannes Oldervoll, Maciej Otmianowski, Gernot Rieder and Kjetil Rommetveit and comments and feedback from the Scientific Advisory Board. 21.04.2023
• Nicolas Baya-Laffite, Céline Cholez and Kjetil Rommetveit organise the session  Mapping the territories of digital contact tracing (external link) during the 6th Nordic STS Conference 2023: Disruption and Repair in and beyond STS (external link), with CoPol paper contributions from Johannes Oldervoll, Gernot Rieder and Kjetil Rommetveit. University of Oslo, 08.06.23
• Focus group with national decision-makers: Smittesporing og digital beredskap: et dialogmøte med sentrale norske aktører (Contact tracing and digital preparedness: a dialogue meeting with central Norwegian actors). The focus group consisted of 11 participants: Three members of CoPol ad representatives from the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, the Ministry of Health and Care Services, Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), the Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics and the Directorate of e-health. Oslo, 13.06.23

2024

• CoPol meeting at the Centre for the Study of the Professions, OsloMet, reviewing ongoing paper work and planning future project activities, including a Special Issues proposal based on the panel "Mapping the Territories of Digital Contact Tracing" at the 6th Nordic STS conference. June 2024.
• CoPol meeting at the TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo, with focus on current and forthcoming project publications. November 2024

2025

• Two-day workshop for our topical collection at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna, with individual paper presentations and feedback. May 2025
• Opening of the Call for Papers for the topical collection "Reassembling Politics through Sensory Power? Digital Contact Tracing and the Infrastructuring of Governance (external link)" in the Digital Society, co-edited by Nicolas Baya-Laffite, Céline Cholez, Gernot Rieder and Kjetil Rommetveit (submission deadline: December 31, 2025). August 2025
• Paper presentation at the 8th AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (external link): Wong, P.-H. & Rieder, G. (2025). When Algorithms Fail: The Case for Moral Repair. (Conference Proceedings). AIES 2025. (proceedings still in production). October 2025
• Two-day symposium on AI Futures at the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS), Oslo, as part of the project Acting on AI: Digital Constiutionalism in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (external link).  Organized by Kjetil Rommetveit, Irina Shklovsi and Niels van Dijk. October 2025

Publications

Wong, P.-H. & Rieder, G. (2025). After Harm: A Plea for Moral Repair after Algorithms Have Failed (external link). Science and Engineering Ethics, 31(26). 

Metzler, Ingrid & Åm, Heidrun (2022) How the governance of and through digital contact tracing technologies shapes geographies of power (external link). Policy & Politics, 50(2), 181-198.

Rommetveit, Kjetil & van Dijk, Niels (2022) Privacy engineering and the techno-regulatory imaginary (external link). Social Studies of Science, 52(6), 853–877.