Abstract
Governments around the globe have started to develop and deploy digital contact tracing apps to gain control over the spread of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). The appropriateness and usefulness of these technologies as a containment measure have since sparked political and academic discussions globally. The present paper contributes to this debate through an exploration of how the national daily newspapers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland reported on the development and adoption of digital contact-tracing apps during early and after stages of the lockdown. These countries were among the first in Europe to develop apps and were critical voices in the debate of decentralized vs. centralized data processing. We conducted thematic analysis on news coverage published between January and May 2020 in high-circulation national daily newspapers from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. A total of 148 articles from nine newspaper companies were included in the final analysis. From our analysis emerged six core themes of the development and adoption of digital contact tracing apps: 1) data governance; 2) role of IT giants; 3) scientific rigor; 4) voluntariness; 5) functional efficacy; 6) role of the app. These results shed light on the different facets of discussion regarding digital contact tracing as portrayed in German-speaking media. This study complements emerging survey data on public perceptions of digital contact tracing apps by providing a better understanding of the ideas circulating in the media ecosystem.
Highlights
Covid19 outbreak and pandemicThe novel coronavirus (Covid-19), first detected late 2019 in China, quickly reached global proportions, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic on March 11, 2020
To date, only few studies have examined news coverage of digital contact tracing apps [25,26,27]. Building on this literature this study aims to investigate how national daily newspapers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland report on the development and adoption of digital contacttracing apps during early and after stages of the lockdown
We conducted a thematic analysis [28] of newspaper articles from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland published between January and May 2020 reporting on the development and adoption of smartphone apps for digital contact-tracing during the Covid-19 pandemic
Summary
The novel coronavirus (Covid-19), first detected late 2019 in China, quickly reached global proportions, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Researchers found the virus to be highly contagious with cases ranging from asymptomatic to severe respiratory infections [1]. Several countries went into lockdown, an approach that restricted individual freedom of movement, hurt the economy, and abruptly halted international travel. Newspaper coverage of Covid-19 digital contact-tracing apps in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland
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