ArticleEthics and information technology2022
Framing ethical issues associated with the UK COVID-19 contact tracing app: exceptionalising and narrowing the public ethics debate.
Article in Ethics and information technology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- 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
- ["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
- Acceptability of the COVID-19 contact-tracing app - Does culture matter?Government information quarterly · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This paper explores ethical debates associated with the UK COVID-19 contact tracing app that occurred in the public news media and broader public policy, and in doing so, takes ethics debate as an object for sociological study. The research question was: how did UK national newspaper news articles and grey literature frame the ethical issues about the app, and how did stakeholders associated with the development and/or governance of the app reflect on this? We examined the predominance of different ethical issues in news articles and grey literature, and triangulated this using stakeholder interview data. Findings illustrate how news articles exceptionalised ethical debate around the app compared to the way they portrayed ethical issues relating to 'manual' contact tracing. They also narrowed the debate around specific privacy concerns. This was reflected in the grey literature, and interviewees perceived this to have emerged from a 'privacy lobby'. We discuss the findings, and argue that this limited public ethics narrative masked broader ethical issues.
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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.