Communications in crisis: the politics of information-sharing in the UK’s Covid-19 response
Communications in crisis: the politics of information-sharing in the UK’s Covid-19 response
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危机中的通信：英国应对 Covid-19 中的信息共享政治
DOI：
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发表时间：
2021
影响因子：
1.6
通讯作者：
Nina Jorden
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
D. Sage;Chris R. Zebrowski;Nina Jorden
自世纪之交的重组以来，英国民事应急机构促进了信息流通，成为将多机构应急反应集合体联系在一起的主要手段。打破了自上而下的治理层级图，民防，一个更灵活和弹性的应急响应方法被设想为解决预计在21世纪的威胁形式（Zebrowski 2016）。这一新设计的关键是信息流通在加强应急机构内部和之间的合作方面的作用。提高信息的质量和获取信息的机会，将使紧急事件中的决策权下放给当地的应对者。信息和通信技术（ICT）将允许应急响应自下而上进行自组织，而不是自上而下的命令和控制：有望提高应急响应的速度和效率（Zebrowski 2019），同时也激发了对所谓的“新自由主义”应急响应责任化的无数批评。从我们对英国新冠肺炎应对措施的持续定性研究来看，很明显，这种应急响应的信息化愿景已经从根本上崩溃。联合王国灾难性的应急管理是由中央集权的、自上而下的决策和严重阻碍各级政府和应急人员之间信息自由流动所界定的。虽然这种倾向远非英国复原力实践的新方面（Sage，Fussey和Dainty 2015），但它们的发生在Covid-19期间有所加剧和扩大。鉴于联合王国在过去十年中努力将自己定位于一个自称的新的信息和通信技术复原力范例的先锋，这一点也许更加值得注意，该范例围绕着我们在这里的研究和分析的主要分析对象：一个名为ResilienceDirect的协作应急平台。在这篇简短的文章中，我们简要地反思了在英国应对新冠肺炎的过程中，这种应急响应的信息愿景是如何被破坏的。我们认为，指挥和控制方法在应急治理中的重新出现，使当地应对者的作用边缘化，并削弱了英国应对新冠肺炎的有效性。我们的分析是根据我们在2020年8月至12月期间与41名参与英国Covid-19应对的应急响应专业人员进行的访谈得出的。最后一节将反思这一分析对应急政策的影响以及对新自由主义复原力和安全的理解。
Since its restructuring at the turn of the century, UK Civil Contingencies has promoted information-circulation as the primary means of binding together multi-agency emergency response assemblages. Breaking from the top-down hierarchical diagram of governance which characterised Civil Defence, a more agile and resilient approach to emergency response was envisioned to address the forms of threat anticipated in the 21 century (Zebrowski 2016). Key to this new design was the role of information circulation in enhancing collaboration within and across responder agencies. Enhancing quality and access to information would permit decision making power within emergency events to be devolved to local responders. Rather than imposing command and control from the top-down, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) would permit emergency responses to self-organise from the bottom-up: promising to improve the speed and efficiency of emergency responses (Zebrowski 2019), while also inspiring myriad critiques of the professed ‘neoliberal’ responsibilization of emergency response. Viewed from our ongoing qualitative research within the UK’s Covid-19 response it is clear that this informational vision of emergency response has fundamentally broken down. The calamitous management of the response in the UK has been defined by centralised, top-down decision-making and serious impediments to the free flow of information between different levels of government and emergency responders. While such propensities are far from a new aspect of UK resilience practice (Sage, Fussey, and Dainty 2015), their occurrence has intensified and expanded during Covid-19. This is perhaps all the more notable given the UK’s efforts over the past decade to position itself at the vanguard of a professed new resilience paradigm of ICT, centring around the primary object of analysis of our research and analysis here: a collaborative emergency response platform called ResilienceDirect. In this short contribution, we reflect briefly on how this informational vision of emergency response has been undermined within the UK response to Covid-19. We argue that the reemergence of command-and-control approaches to emergency governance has marginalised the role of local responders and undermined the effectiveness of the UK’s Covid-19 response. Our analysis is informed by interviews we have conducted with 41 emergency response professionals involved in the UK Covid-19 response between August and December 2020. A concluding section will reflect on the implications of this analysis for emergency policy and understandings of neoliberal resilience and security.