John Philip Sage


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Data Justice and COVID-19

Data Justice and COVID-19: Global Perspectives is a book published by Meatspace Press and edited by Linnet Taylor, Aaron Martin, Gargi Sharma and Shazade Jameson.

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped how social, economic, and political power is created, exerted, and extended through technology. Through case studies from around the world, this book analyses the ways in which technologies of monitoring infections, information, and behaviour have been applied and justified during the emergency, what their side-effects have been, and what kinds of resistance they have met.

The design of this publication offers visual entry points to the meaning of the word surveillance. Borrowed from the French, it means literally ‘to watch from above’, by the combination of the prefix sur- (‘over’ or ‘above’) and veiller (‘to watch’, derived from the Latin verb vigilare, with the same meaning). This definition led to the development of a series of graphic signifiers presented across the book’s layout and image-making: cartographic, monitoring, documental and tracking visual languages intertwine in overimposed layers.

Designed with Carlos Romo-Melgar
Photographs by Tais Sirote