Corona Truth Wars: Testing and Contesting Knowledge in a Hyper-Mobile Pandemic - III

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic created a global crisis challenging humankind to develop as quickly as possible reliable knowledge about the virus and its devastating effects on our bodies and societies in order to minimize such harms. This situation of great uncertainty and enormous stakes incited a historically unique international knowledge producing effort by institutionalized scientists and research groups. While debate and disagreement exists within these scientific communities, more controversial are the various competing “outside” forms and sources of information on the virus and its mitigation strategies. Some are clear disinformation campaigns or far-fetched conspiracy theories, others are legitimate challenges to the temporary status quo. In the hyper-mobile context of knowledge production during an evolving pandemic, it is often hard to tell the difference. Questions such as ‘what information is reliable?’, ‘which experts should we follow?’, and ‘what (epistemic) authorities are to trust?’, take center stage in public debates. Prevalent clear-cut distinctions between “real” knowledge controversies and “fake” disruptions of scientific progress obscure the fact that the global quest for truthful knowledge about the virus is entangled with various (geo)political dynamics, government policy pressures, media reporting, platform moderation and public understandings of it all. STS scholars are perfectly equipped with concepts, theories and methods to help understand these complex dynamics involving uncertainty, changing insights, and (covert) manipulation. In this panel we invite scholars working on such “corona truth wars”: we welcome both empirical and theoretical studies on the cultures, politics and technologies of today’s corona knowledge contestations.

Discussant

• Linsey Jane McGoey

Individual Presentations

• Censorship of covid-19 heterodoxy - Brian Martin, University Of Wollongong

• Corona Conflicts in Germany. Old and New Constellations of Discourses, Practices and Groups - Ehler Voss, University of Siegen

• The Israeli Vaccination Campaign Though the Prism of Trust - Ori Freiman, Bar-Ilan University

• PCR-Gate: Popular Contestations with Scientists and Media of the Gold Standard Measuring Corona Infections - Jaron Harambam, Institute for Media Studies - KU Leuven

Session Organizers

• Jaron Harambam, Institute for Media Studies - KU Leuven

• Ehler Voss, University of Siegen