Governing risk society: the socio-technological experiences of China and South Korea in the COVID-19 pandemic

This is a critical comparative analysis of the systematic ways in which technology and big data practices are employed in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in China and South Korea. This study argues that the success of the strategies depends not on isolated applications of technological tools but the responsive socio-technological webs of a wide range of actors and resources mobilized and coordinated through well-functioning technological, public health, and administrative infrastructures in the two countries. Moreover, the characteristic responses in the two countries, ranging from the coordination and mobilization by the state, health care and digital infrastructures as public good provision, to risk communication with the public, shed light on how the dynamics of risk society plays out along the developmental paths of the two East Asian societies. The future-oriented infrastructures for governance in risk society, the study concludes, are constituted in the imbrication of institutional, historical, and cultural factors, of which technologies are only but one part.