Framing the Pandemic and the Rise of the Digital Surveillance State

Abstract

The pandemic caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus has provided a pretext formany countries of the world to extend executive powers, and their digitalsurveillance capacities in particular. Aiming to identify how differentregimes frame digital surveillance, this paper employs qualitative contentanalysis to compare the government framing of digital surveillance in India,Israel and Singapore. Although due to their different working dynamics,one would expect democracies and autocracies to frame digital surveillancein di!erent ways, our findings reveal an overlap between liberal and illiberalrhetoric across the cases and point to unexplored illiberal peculiaritieswithin the category of ‘democratic backsliders.’ We conclude by cautiouslyspeculating how heightened extents of digital surveillance and trackingmay become the new normal across regime types, and how governmentsmight exploit and recycle these same frames to justify digital surveillanceafter the COVID-19 crisis is over.