Making pandemics public: COVID-19 dashboards, health security and popular communication

Real-time dashboards were one of the emblematic features of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article analyses dashboards as popular media of situational awareness. After developing an analytics of the popular inspired by systems theory and deconstruction, we highlight three points. First, the proliferation of the dashboard can be understood against the backdrop of a liberal biopolitics of health emergencies. Under liberal conditions, public health officials depend on the cooperation of the population, which is why communicating the situation is a central element of crisis management in pandemics. Second, the dashboard can be understood as a technical solution to the communication challenges associated with lay audiences. From the perspective of those responsible, laypeople have difficulty correctly interpreting scientific data on the pandemic, which is why alternative forms of representation and communication are needed. Finally, we highlight the affective dimension of dashboard inclusion. The aesthetic of the dashboard is observed as an affective tool that is capable of fascinating the public even before any meaning is processed. On the one hand, this fascination fosters inclusion, as it binds the viewer more strongly to the events. However, it also becomes problematic when aesthetic dramatization threatens to undermine the subjectification of a pandemic citizenship.