Blog | Exploitation of our Data

9. July 2021

Digital care: How social support during the Covid-19 pandemic shifted to the digital and our worries became “surplus value”

Daniela Krüger | Nina Margies | Robert Vief | Prof. Dr. Talja Blokland

This blog post shows that the Covid-19 pandemic and contact restrictions changed the how and where of exchanging social support with others shifting increasingly to the digital. This may be in part a result of the Berliners’ attempt to create a new private outside. Krüger et al. argue, however, that this new private relies on an illusio of privacy. Especially during the pandemic, they hold, our worries might have become “surplus value” in an unregulated and intransparent market of data on and by us.

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