Automated responses to the coronavirus disease-19 pandemic: an overview

The pandemic response was a thoroughly mediated phenomenon – one that paired digital information technologies with automated logistical systems to address inter-related crises of circulation. In the logistical sphere, automated media were used to manage flows of people, commodities and even (in the case of ‘smart’ ventilation systems) air itself. In the media realm, automated systems played a role in circulating timely notifications and alerts and in detecting and responding to false information. This theme issue brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers focused on the analysis of automated control and response systems, including the networked devices and infrastructures that supported them, and the digital forms of data collection and processing they enabled. This introductory essay focuses on some organizing themes that emerge from the theme issue contributions, including the relationship between automation and the temporality of viral contagion, logics of pre-emptive intervention and forms of atmospheric and environmental control.