ArticlePloS one2021
Digital contact-tracing during the Covid-19 pandemic: An analysis of newspaper coverage in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Quality and Adoption of COVID-19 Tracing Apps and Recommendations for Development: Systematic Interdisciplinary Review of European Apps.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Pooled it
- Characteristics Influencing Support for the National Health Service COVID-19 App in England and Wales: Findings From a Longitudinal Survey.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- An individual's trust in government is a major determinant in the decision to voluntarily join a public health initiative.Israel journal of health policy research · 2025Article
- Survey of Citizens' Preferences for Combined Contact Tracing App Features During a Pandemic: Conjoint Analysis.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Effectiveness of probabilistic contact tracing in epidemic containment: The role of superspreaders and transmission path reconstruction.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Contact tracing in Austria, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Kosovo† during the COVID-19 pandemic: response review and good practices.European journal of public health · 2024Article
- A privacy calculus model for contact tracing apps: Analyzing the use behavior of the German Corona-Warn-App with a longitudinal user study.Computers & security · 2023Article
- Digital exposure notification tools: A global landscape analysis.PLOS digital health · 2023Article
- Newspaper coverage on solidarity and personal responsibility in the COVID-19 pandemic: A content analysis from Germany and German-speaking Switzerland.SSM - population health · 2023Article
- Hybrid harmony search algorithm for social network contact tracing of COVID-19.Soft computing · 2023Article
- ["Sending a signal of solidarity via bluetooth?"-A medical ethical analysis of the public debate on the Corona-Warn-App].Ethik in der Medizin : Organ der Akademie fur Ethik in der Medizin · 2023Article
- Continued Use of Contact-Tracing Apps in the United States and the United Kingdom: Insights From a Comparative Study Through the Lens of the Health Belief Model.JMIR formative research · 2022Article
- Governing partnerships with technology companies as part of the COVID-19 response in Canada: A qualitative case study.PLOS digital health · 2022Article
- Widening or narrowing inequalities? The equity implications of digital tools to support COVID-19 contact tracing: A qualitative study.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2022Article
- In the shadow of privacy: Overlooked ethical concerns in COVID-19 digital epidemiology.Epidemics · 2022Article
- The German COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing App: A Socioeconomic Evaluation.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Designing evaluation framework for the empirical assessment of COVID-19 mobile apps in Pakistan.Computers & electrical engineering : an international journal · 2022Article
- Determinants of the acceptance and adoption of a digital contact tracing tool during the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore.Epidemiology and infection · 2022Article
- ["I hope to be informed". Effects of the Corona-Warning-App].Pravention und Gesundheitsforderung · 2022Article
- Framing ethical issues associated with the UK COVID-19 contact tracing app: exceptionalising and narrowing the public ethics debate.Ethics and information technology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.