RAPID: Science and Social Networks: COVID-19 in an Urban Epicenter award

The primary objective of this RAPID research project is to further our understanding of the influences that shape policy making concerning public health during the COVID 19 pandemic with a focus on New York City as a global epicenter. The researchers plan to provide a time sensitive, living record and analysis that documents the unfolding of social and political aspects of the present crisis. They will study relational encounters in social and political realms during the pandemic that shape multiple interpretations of events, images, and broadcasts in a networked world; and how they in turn affect public responses, programmatic decisions, and policies that relate to public health in an urban context. The results of the project will be disseminated to policy makers, community members, media spokespersons, public health and medical experts in New York City, and global health stakeholders through publications in policy journals, newspapers, access to radio and news programs, and online platforms.

This project aims to integrate insights from STS studies, history of global public health, and cultural and media studies to analyze political responses, public health communications, and policy decisions concerning COVID-19. It will contribute to STS frameworks by arguing that COVID-19 needs to be understood not only in terms of epidemiological and biological evidence-building regarding its contagiousness and virulence; it also needs to be understood in terms of social and political virality and transmissibility of social modes of thought that shape its interpretations. To achieve these ends, the researchers will draw from media studies of social susceptibility, diffusion, and differential impact. They will engage in content analysis of traditional media and social media, and they will conduct interviews with 50 key actors. They will produce an initial account of policymaking in a time of health and social crisis while generating critical material for future scholars of COVID-19. Their interview materials are to be donated to the Columbia University Center for Oral History Research; their print/digital materials are to be donated to the Special Collections division at the University’s Health Sciences Library.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.