Abstract
There is a growing body of research in the democratization of science, participatory governance, and citizen science within the extant Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature. The COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge not only in the medical sense but also for public policy due to limited data availability and deliberation process in policy making. This study focuses on the role of data activists in citizen-centered public policy making during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. We examine two cases to argue that there was a data vacuum and data activists got extremely creative with the available data to satisfy the public’s hunger for information and to facilitate the deliberation process through Twitter. In each case, data activists challenged the official discourse and provided their data analysis in a clear and concise manner that could be understood by the public easily. Twitter’s growing importance in the democratization of science became obvious, as it was the medium where most interaction happened.
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Notes
- 1.
We are aware that there is an immense variation in participatory/citizen science activities that cannot be neatly captured into these ideal types.
- 2.
Because of limited space, we only included a few examples here.
- 3.
Anthony Stephen Fauci is an American physician-scientist and immunologist serving as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President. He has become a celebrity during the pandemic in multiple controversies supporting science.
- 4.
Please see, https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/sdg-16/
- 5.
Unless they are permanently banned after repeated violations of the community guidelines such as the former US president Donald Trump.
- 6.
It should also be noted that unlike cases like Italy and India, the Turkish health care system never completely collapsed (see Balta and Ozel 2022 for more details).
- 7.
Case numbers are correlated with testing capacity and implementation, and Turkey’s response on both fronts was less than stellar.
- 8.
For Koca’s original tweet see (translation by the authors): https://twitter.com/drfahrettinkoca/status/1311589273997631489?lang=en
- 9.
It should be noted that it is notoriously difficult to make cross-country comparisons, even if the data is compatible because of different testing capacities, population density, etc.
- 10.
This journal is also known to have some predatory publishing practices.
- 11.
For a detailed account of how Benford’s Law is applied to daily case and death rates in 84 countries, please see the Medyascope interview with Burak Tatari at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O9y74eXVPA. For all of Berk’s study see his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@ZekiBerk
- 12.
Please see Acik Radyo for details at https://acikradyogunlugu.wordpress.com/2021/03/04/4-mart-2021-persembe-617-hafta/
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Ilhan, A.O., Aydınoğlu, A.U. (2023). Data Wars During COVID-19 Pandemic in Turkey: Regulatory Science, Trust, Risk, and Citizen Science. In: Göçoğlu, V., Karkin, N. (eds) Citizen-Centered Public Policy Making in Turkey. Contributions to Public Administration and Public Policy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35364-2_16
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