Digital Mobile Technology in Managing the Epidemic in China and Media and Public Response

Covid-19: Digital Technology as a Public Health Tool
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Covid-19: Digital Technology as a Public Health Tool
Aims
The purpose of this study is to: (1) investigate the role played by digital technology, particularly mobile contact tracing applications, in managing the epidemic in China and (2) examine media and public response to the use of the same in the context of public health. This research will restrict its regional focus to China and limit digital technology to contact tracing mobile applications developed specifically for Covid-19. The two research aims will help improve understanding of the relative impact of digital mobile technology on public health and media and public responses to mobile contact tracing applications.
Background
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to present enormous challenges to public health officials in terms of complex transmission routes, pending initial points of infection, high contagiousness of the virus, large populations of highly susceptible people, infected populations widely scattered, and unavailability of vaccines (Chiba, 2021). Given the existence of asymptomatic patients and the long incubation period of Covid-19, timely and accurate contact tracing is crucial to managing the spread of the virus (Zhao et al., 2020). Contact tracing is a way of monitoring infected individuals or those exposed to infected persons through the process of contact identification, listing, and follow-up (Owusu, 2020). In February of last year, China rolled out the "health code" app countrywide to restrict people's movements and curb new infection rates. (Hogan et al., 2021).
Developed by two of China's biggest internet giants, Tencent and Alibaba, citizens were required to input their details to register. The “health code” app employs self-reported travel histories, odd symptoms, and users’ medical data to assign citizens a green, red, or yellow QR code (Zhou et al., 2021). A green code allows a user to access public spaces freely, and a red code indicates that the user is infected with the virus. In contrast, a yellow code means that the user might have contacted an infected person and must quarantine in an isolation facility or home (Seto et al., 2020). Implementing mobile contact tracing applications has been critical to China successfully combatting Covid-19 (Shu & Li, 2020). As more countries implement similar health code systems, digital contact tracing has attracted enormous interest among scholars and policymakers.
Most studies have tended to concentrate on evaluating the effectiveness and accuracy of mobile applications in virus detection. A few studies have investigated the ethical implications of digital contact tracing, especially concerns over discrimination, mass surveillance, and privacy. Studies have found that mobile contact tracing applications are more effective than manual contact tracing. One study determined that technology tracing efficacy was 80% effective in identifying close contacts as compared to manual contact tracing, whose effectiveness was determined to be 11% (Shahroz et al., 2021). However, the studies also revealed that the effectiveness of digital tracing tools depended on app uptake by citizens. The prevalent use of mobile contact tracing applications depended on how well users trusted the government and application developers to deal with privacy violations, discrimination, and mass surveillance concerns.
Significance and Innovation
This study is essential to increasing current knowledge of the relative impact of mobile contact tracing tools in solving the unique challenges posed by Covid-19, over and above, managing the spread of the virus in a highly connected world. More importantly, the study findings may provide valuable insights to both mobile application developers and governments on improving the quality of digital contact tracing tools comprehensively, thereby, enhancing the positive impacts of digital technologies on epidemic prevention and control. This research is new in that, unlike other studies that have investigated digital contact tracing from a Western perspective, and this study will consider the sociopolitical contexts of the "health code" app concerning China's approach to pandemic control. The study will try to develop a socially specific approach that is both cognizant and sensitive to the Chinese social reality to uncover implicit and undiscovered misunderstandings and assumptions inside and outside China about the "health code" app.
The research is not a repetition of other studies, and rather it builds on already gathered evidence of mobile contact tracing applications to come up with profound understandings of their role in managing the pandemic in China, along with both media and public response to the use of the same in the context of public health. This new way of examining digital contact tracing tools will involve contextualizing the “health code” app in China's Covid-19 control efforts and examining the functionality and efficacy of the “health code” app in managing new infection rates. It also entails investigating both media and public perceptions about the adoption of the “health code” app concerning specific ethical concerns, including privacy violations, discrimination, and mass surveillance. It would be essential to understand how the various ethical implications have affected uptake or even the overall effectiveness of the digital contact tracing tool.
The study will also use a new methodology. Instead of relying on quantitative studies, as most studies on the topic have done, this research will apply both quantitative and qualitative research designs. Very few studies have adopted a qualitative approach to the topic, and even fewer have used a mixed-methods design. The mixed-methods design will ensure that both quantitative and qualitative data are simultaneously collected, thereby offsetting the number fetishism of most quantitative studies (often at the expense of gathering valuable data on the experiences, perception, and attitudes of mobile contact tracing application users) and the subjectivity of the few qualitative studies (often the result of using small sample sizes). This mixed-methods design will help analyze the role of mobile contact tracing applications in managing the pandemic in China without overly focusing on statistical data. The study findings will be grounded in participants' experiences, particularly when examining media and public perceptions about adopting the “health code” app concerning the three mentioned ethical concerns.
Approach and Methodology
Theoretical Approach
The installation of the “health code” app was broadly adopted after the Chinese government made all public spaces accessible to individuals with a green code only, thereby making the app mandatory. Still, the research will be underpinned by the protection motivation theory and the health belief model. The two theories will help evaluate the role of digital contact tracing tools in China and their reception by both the media and the public.
The protection motivation theory is founded on expectancy-value theories, which argue that beliefs of attitudes influence health behaviors. It is a widely-applied framework to examine responses to triggers that appraise a person of a potential health threat and motivate the individual to adopt protective health behaviors. The theory posits that people assess a potential response to a health risk through threat and coping appraisal processes. The threat appraisal process entails evaluating the severity or likelihood of the health risk occurring. In contrast, the coping appraisal process involves evaluating the efficacy of the health behavior, the difficulty of implementing the health behavior, and the perceived ability to enact the recommended health action (Pilch et al., 2021). If the coping appraisal is stronger than the threat appraisal, then a positive response occurs, while if the reverse happens, a maladaptive response follows.
On the other hand, the health belief model is founded on psychological and behavioral theory. Six constructs underlie the health belief model: perceived susceptibility (the individual's subjective evaluation of his or her vulnerability to disease); perceived severity (the individual's subjective evaluation of the consequences of contracting the disease); perceived benefits (the individual's subjective evaluation of the advantages of applying the recommended health action); perceived barriers (the individual's subjective evaluation of the impediments to applying the endorsed health action); cue to action (the internal and external stimuli to accepting the suggested health action); and self-efficacy (the individual's level of confidence in their ability to apply the new health behavior successfully) (Kim &...