Digital Culture & Society (DCS): Vol 8, Issue 1/2022 - Coding Covid-19: The Rise of the App-Society

Code is intended both as a computer-based language to program software and as a functional and visual language for organizing administrative processes, visualizing information, performing behaviour control, and reinforcing shared imaginaries based on surveillance and dread. This special issue of Digital Culture & Society deals with the concept of code in relation to the Covid-19 crisis. The contributions depart from the idea that both forms of coding have become dramatically intertwined during the pandemic and are structuring a new way of being in and seeing reality. They explore the new forms of data-driven surveillance and representation of the pandemic evolution at the level of real-time epidemiology, sensor technologies, science policies, push media, and the heterogeneous counter-discourses that try to subvert them.

Julia Ramírez-Blanco (Dr. phil.) is contemporary art lecturer in Barcelona University. She works on the intersections between utopia, visual culture and activism.

Ramón Reichert (Dr. phil. habil.) teaches and researches as a senior researcher at the Department of Cultural Studies at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna. Previously, he taught and researched in Basel, Berlin, Canberra, Fribourg, Helsinki, Sankt Gallen, Stockholm and Zurich and was EU project coordinator for many years. His current research project »Visual Politics and Protest. Artistic Research Project on the visual framing of the Russia-Ukraine War on internet portals and social media« (2022-2024) deals with the visual politics of violence, conflict and resistance.

Francesco Spampinato (Dr. phil.) is an associate professor at the University of Bologna. A scholar and writer of contemporary art history and visual culture, his research focuses on the relationships between art, media, and technology.