COVID-19 contact tracing apps and the governance of collective action: social nudges, deliberation, and solidarity in Europe and beyond

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Digital Contact Tracing (DCT) tools were deployed by governments in Europe and beyond as a novel mobile technology to assist traditional manual contact tracing to track individuals who have come in close contact with an infected person. The public debate on this topic focused strongly on the protection of individual privacy. While this debate is important, it fails to address important governance questions – such as, for example, that DCT tools took on the role of social nudges, namely, tools of soft regulation that calibrate information flows so as to “push” people to act in ways that promote collective purposes. Social nudges include a range of norms and values that, however, are built into the technological and social features of the nudge, rather than rendering them open to public scrutiny and debate. Although the use of contact tracing apps is being phased out, the digitization of contact tracing can be seen as a case study of the broader trend towards digitization of the provision of health services. Debates of their governance thus have broader implications for the governance of data driven tools deployed for public health purposes in times of crisis.