Interactional and contributory expertise in the debate around COVID status apps:policy experiences in digital social science

Digital introduces a novel range of policy and practical challenges to society. These digital social science challenges are best addressed when they engage ideas across academic boundaries. This chapter examines two rapid policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic that studied the role of digital technologies. It draws on concepts of interactional and contributory expertise to make sense of the research practices that allowed academics to engage effectively across disciplinary boundaries and illustrates the consequences of these insights in relation to the debate around COVID status apps. The use of these apps raises important questions including the ethics of using digital technology to potentially enable a two–tier society and the role of public / private partnerships in the transformation of the nation state. Policy responses that are not constrained by academic boundaries enable more careful consideration of the consequences of digital for these important questions of digital social science.