Where There is Power, There is Resistance: On the Controversial Advent of Sensory Power During COVID-19

Abstract This paper examines the rise and contestation of sensory power during the COVID-19 pandemic through the case of digital contact tracing (DCT) in Germany. Following Isin and Ruppert’s conceptualization, sensory power refers to an emerging governing logic that mobilizes live data to register conduct and modulate behavior through digital assemblages. The pandemic rendered this new form of power particularly visible as governments promoted smartphone-based contact tracing as a key strategy to curb infections and reopen society without compromising public health. Yet, despite high expectations, the German case reveals how sensory power was significantly constrained by resistance across multiple domains. Technical experts and legal authorities rejected early plans to track citizens via mobile phone location data. Research communities, advocacy groups, and European institutions pushed back against centralized architectures, favoring privacy-preserving alternatives. Corporate actors, specifically Apple and Google, exerted infrastructural power to enforce decentralized solutions, reshaping national strategies. Finally, public skepticism, rooted in privacy concerns, distrust, and doubts about the app’s effectiveness, limited uptake of the Corona-Warn-App and curtailed its impact. These dynamics highlight that the pandemic did not yield an uncontested rise of sensory power but rather a provisional and fragile compromise shaped by pushback from diverse actors. The paper concludes that sensory power, far from being fully realized, remains a contested and evolving mode of governance whose trajectory in liberal democracies will depend on societal negotiations over values and their implementation, the ability to cultivate an ethos of trustworthiness, and the specific configurations of digital sovereignty amid growing corporate control.