Can Digital Democracy Guard Citizens’ Safety? Taking Taiwan’s Battle against covid as an Exemplary Case

Lee, Chun-Yi; Kuo, Yu-Ching

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic required swift responses from governments at all levels. Government agencies were faced with the immense task of mitigating the health, social, and economic effects of covid-19. These actions and responses included developing mobile phone location tracking systems and ‘electronic fences’ alongside the use of big data analytics. Whether intentionally or not, this led to questions about the rise of the ‘biosurveillance state’. In this paper, we examine the extent to which digital democracy has emerged as a contested concept in Taiwan. Furthermore, we ask: to what extent is the use of digital surveillance for disease control and prevention justifiable, and to what extent can personal privacy be sacrificed when adopting digital surveillance measures with the aim of securing collective safety? We compare Taiwanese citizens’ concerns about personal privacy with those in other democracies, such as the UK, and those in the EU and North America.

Citation

Lee, C.-Y., & Kuo, Y.-C. (2024). Can Digital Democracy Guard Citizens’ Safety? Taking Taiwan’s Battle against covid as an Exemplary Case. International Journal of Taiwan Studies, 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1163/24688800-20241320

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 26, 2023
• Online Publication Date: May 20, 2024
• Publication Date: May 20, 2024
• Deposit Date: May 10, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: May 21, 2025
• Journal: International Journal of Taiwan Studies
• Print ISSN: 2468-8797
• Electronic ISSN: 2468-8800
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 1-32
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/24688800-20241320
• Keywords: Taiwan; Covid-19; digital democracy, big data analysis, civic hacker
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/20561074
• Additional Information: © Chun-Yi Lee and Yu-Ching Kuo, 2024; This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license