Engineering care in pandemic technogovernance: The politics of care in China and South Korea’s COVID-19 tracking apps

This article critically examines South Korea and China’s COVID-19 tracking apps by bridging surveillance studies with feminist technoscience’s understanding of the “politics care”. Conducting critical readings textual analysis discursive materials, we demonstrate how ideological, relational, material practices strategically deployed “care” to normalize a particular form pandemic technogovernance in these two countries. In ideological dimension, media state discourse utilized combination vilifying nationalist rhetoric that framed one’s acquiescence as demonstration national belonging. Meanwhile, also performed ambivalent roles facilitating essential care services mobilizing self-tracking activities, which contributed manufacturing pseudonormality societies. end, argue Chinese Korean governments managed frame their aggressive infrastructure during paternalistic finessing blurred boundaries between control.