Becoming objective: an ethnography of COVID-19 data on the move

Abstract

Based on my ethnographic fieldwork and time as a contact tracer with a county health department in the United States, in this article I tell the story of COVID-19 data as it “becomes objective” from its initial inscription. Attending to framings of COVID-19 data as objective and reliable, I examine the social life of these data as they travel through various bureaucracies, and the meanings they accrue as they interact with a range of human and non-human actors. I argue that these data are made objective not through particular practices to ensure data quality, as one might expect, but rather through technologies of data management, bureaucratic divisions of labor, and the aesthetics of public relations. I conclude by examining what this means for public health and government agencies and how we might be able to improve data practices moving forward.