Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Published in:
Introduction: The Necessity (and Spirit) of Critique in Andrew Feenberg’s Philosophy of Technology Read chapter Read first chapter

2022 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. Andrew Feenberg and the Distorted Democratization of Technology: Covid-19 and the Case of Hydroxychloroquine

Author : Tina Sikka

Published in: The Necessity of Critique

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Log in

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config
loading …

Abstract

This chapter examines the contentious Covid therapeutic, hydroxychloroquine, using Andrew Feenberg’s theory of technological democratization. I explore whether the use of this experimental medicine is suitable, fit for, or reflective of a process of technological democratization in a manner that is similar to that of HIV/AIDS medicines and trials. In answering this, I draw on Feenberg‘s technological democratization thesis and extend his conception of care, bodily integrity, and communication in medicine using a reconstructed concept of care as expressed by feminist ethics. My central argument is that technological democratization of Covid-19 treatments and the underlying science has been made extremely difficult because hydroxychloroquine has become emblematic of polarized and polarizing political battles. In doing so, I articulate a model of “distorted technological democratization” to explain this phenomenon.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe




 

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now
previous chapter The Critical Theory of the Common Good, Technology, and the Corona Tracking App
next chapter Beyond the Design Code: Critical Design and Democratic Rationalizations
Literature
Ahmed, S. (2007). A phenomenology of whiteness. Feminist Theory, 8(2), 149–168.CrossRef
Ali, I. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: Making sense of rumor and fear: Op-Ed. Medical Anthropology, 1–4.
Allen, D., & Light, J. (2015). In D. Allen & J. S. Light (Eds.), From voice to influence: Understanding citizenship in a digital age. The University of Chicago Press.CrossRef
Ames, M. G. (2019). The charisma machine: The life, death, and legacy of one laptop per child. MIT Press.CrossRef
Annas, G. J. (1989). Faith (healing), hope and charity at the FDA: The politics of AIDS drug trials. Villanova Law Review, 34, 771.
Attride-Stirling, J. (2001). Thematic networks: An analytic tool for qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 1, 385–405.CrossRef
Bagdasarian, N., Cross, G. B., & Fisher, D. (2020). Rapid publications risk the integrity of science in the era of COVID-19. BMC Medicine, 18(1), 1–5.CrossRef
Bail, C. A., Argyle, L. P., Brown, T. W., Bumpus, J. P., Chen, H., Hunzaker, M. F., et al. (2018). Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(37), 9216–9221.CrossRef
Barad, K., (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 28(3), pp.801–831.
Beira, E., & Feenberg, A. (Eds.). (2018). Technology, modernity, and democracy: Essays by Andrew Feenberg. Rowman & Littlefield.
Bennett, W. L. (1996). An introduction to journalism norms and representations of politics. Political Communication, 13, 373–384.CrossRef
Ben-Porath, S. (2008). Care ethics and dependence—Rethinking jus post bellum. Hypatia, 23(2), 61–71.
Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Lash, S. (1994). Reflexive modernization: Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. California: Stanford University Press
Bentley, D., & Watts, D. M. (1986). Courting the positive virtues: A case for feminist science. European Journal of Science Education, 8(2), 121–134.CrossRef
Berridge, V. (1992). AIDS: History and contemporary history. In G. Herdt & S. Lindenbaum (Eds.), The time of AIDS: Social analysis, theory and method. Sage.
Boykoff, M. T., & Boykoff, J. M. (2004). Balance as bias: Global warming and the US prestige press. Global Environmental Change, 14, 125–136.CrossRef
Brodie, M., Hamel, E. B., Kates, L. A., Altman, J., & Drew, E. (2004). AIDS at 21: Media coverage of the HIV epidemic 1981–2002. Columbia Journalism Review, 42(6), A1–A8.
Calnan, M. (2020). Rationing, regulating and Big Pharma. In Health policy, power and politics: Sociological insights. Emerald Publishing Limited.CrossRef
Coconel Group. (2020). A future vaccination campaign against COVID-19 at risk of vaccine hesitancy and politicisation. The Lancet. Infectious diseases, 20(7), 769.CrossRef
Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2011). Designing and con- ducting mixed methods research. Sage.
de La Bellacasa, M. P. (2011). Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science, 41(1), 85–106.CrossRef
Dean, J. (2005). Communicative capitalism: Circulation and the foreclosure of politics. Cultural Politics, 1(1), 51–74.CrossRef
Dean, J. (2013). Whatever blogging. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory, 127, 46.
Doppelt, G. (2001). What sort of ethics does technology require? The Journal of Ethics, 5(2), 155–175.
Dunwoody, S. (2014). Science journalism: Prospects in the digital age. In M. Bucchi & B. Trench (Eds.), Routledge handbook of public communication of science and technology (2nd ed., pp. 27–39). Routledge.
Epstein, S. (1996). Impure science: AIDS, activism, and the politics of knowledge (Vol. 7). University of California Press.
Feagin, J. R., Orum, A. M., & Sjoberg, G. (Eds.). (1991). A case for the case study. UNC Press Books.
Feenberg, A. (1992a). Subversive rationalization: Technology, power, and democracy. Inquiry, 35(3–4), 301–322.CrossRef
Feenberg, A. (1992b). On being a human subject: Interest and obligation in the experimental treatment of incurable disease. Philosophical Forum., 23(3), 213–230.
Feenberg, A. (2002). Transforming technology: A critical theory revisited. Oxford University Press.
Feenberg, A. (2008). From critical theory of technology to the rational critique of rationality. Social Epistemology, 22(1), 5–28.CrossRef
Feenberg, A. (2010). Marxism and the critique of social rationality: From surplus value to the politics of technology. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34(1), 37–49.CrossRef
Feenberg, A. (2019). The internet as network, world, co-construction, and mode of governance. The Information Society, 35(4), 229–243.CrossRef
Fiske, A., Prainsack, B., & Buyx, A. (2019). Meeting the needs of underserved populations: Setting the agenda for more inclusive citizen science of medicine. Journal of Medical Ethics, 45(9), 617–622.CrossRef
Flowers, P. (2001). Gay men and HIV/AIDS risk management. Health, 5(1), 50–75.CrossRef
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. Vintage.
Fourie, P., & Meyer, M. (2016). The politics of AIDS denialism: South Africa’s failure to respond. Routledge.CrossRef
Fuchs, C., (2009). Information and communication technologies and society: A contribution to the critique of the political economy of the Internet. European journal of communication, 24(1), pp.69–87.
Fuchs, C. (2010). Labor in informational capitalism and on the Internet. The Information Society, 26(3), 179–196.CrossRef
Fuchs, C. (2019). Nationalism on the Internet: Critical theory and ideology in the age of social media and fake news. Routledge.CrossRef
Gelfert, A. (2018). Fake news: a definition. Informal Logic, 38(1), 84–117.
Gertz, N. (2020). Democratic potentialities and toxic actualities. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 24(1/2), 178–194.
Gillett, J. (2003). Media activism and internet use by people with HIV/AIDS. Sociology of Health & Illness, 25(6), 608–624.CrossRef
Gomm, R., Hammersley, M., & Foster, P. (Eds.). (2000). Case study method: Key issues, key texts. Sage.
Gregg, M., Seigworth, G. J., & Ahmed, S. (Eds.). (2010). The affect theory reader. Duke University Press.
Hamamsy, T. & Bonneau, R. (2020). Twitter activity about treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic: case studies of remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, and convalescent plasma. medRxiv.
Harbin, A., Beagan, B., & Goldberg, L. (2012). Discomfort, judgment, and health care for queers. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 9(2), 149–160.CrossRef
Heled, Y., Rutschman, A. S., & Vertinsky, L. (2020). The problem with relying on profit-driven models to produce pandemic drugs. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 7(1), lsaa060.CrossRef
Hertog, J. K., Finnegan, J. R., Jr., & Kahn, E., Jr. (1994). Media coverage of AIDS, cancer, and sexually transmitted diseases: A test of the public arenas model. Journalism Quarterly, 71(2), 291–304.CrossRef
Hyett, N., Kenny, A., & Dickson-Swift, V. (2014). Methodology or method? A critical review of qualitative case study reports. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being, 9(1), 23606.CrossRef
Inefuku, H. W. (2017). Globalization, open access, and the democratization of knowledge. Educause Review, 52(4), 62.
Intemann, K. (2010). 25 years of feminist empiricism and standpoint theory: Where are we now? Hypatia, 25(4), 778–796.CrossRef
Kalichman, S. C. (2018). 19 “HIV does not cause AIDS”: A journey into AIDS denialism. Pseudoscience: The Conspiracy Against Science, 419.
Koehn, D. (1998). Rethinking feminist ethics: Care, trust and empathy. Psychology Press.
Larrabee, M. J. (Ed.). (2016). An ethic of care: Feminist and interdisciplinary perspectives. Routledge.
Latour, B. (2000). When things strike back: A possible contribution of ‘science studies’ to the social sciences. The British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), 107–123.CrossRef
Liao, S. M., Sandberg, A., & Roache, R. (2012). Human engineering and climate change. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 15(2), 206–221.CrossRef
Longino, H. (1994). The fate of knowledge in social theories of science. In F. F. Schmitt (Ed.), Socializing epistemology: The social dimensions of knowledge (pp. 135–158). Rowman and Littlefield.
Mahajan, S., Kumar, P., Pinto, J. A., Riccetti, A., Schaaf, K., Camprodon, G., et al. (2020). A citizen science approach for enhancing public understanding of air pollution. Sustainable Cities and Society, 52, 101800.CrossRef
Mahase, E. (2020). Covid-19: WHO halts hydroxychloroquine trial to review links with increased mortality risk. BMJ (Clinical Research ed.), 369, m2126–m2126.
Mahevas, M., Tran, V. T., Roumier, M., et al. (2020). Clinical efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in patients with covid-19 pneumonia who require oxygen: Observational comparative study using routine care data. BMJ., 14(369), m1844.CrossRef
Malecki, K., Keating, J. A., & Safdar, N. (2021). Crisis communication and public perception of COVID-19 risk in the era of social media. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 72, 697–702.CrossRef
Martin, B. R. (2010). The origins of the concept of ‘foresight’in science and technology: An insider’s perspective. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 77(9), pp.1438–1447.
Mbali, M. (2004). AIDS discourses and the South African state: Government denialism and post-apartheid AIDS policy-making. Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 54(1), 104–122.CrossRef
Mbali, M. (2005). The treatment action campaign and the history of rights-based, patient-driven HIV/AIDS activism in South Africa. In Democratising development: The politics of socio-economic rights in South Africa (pp. 213–243). Martinus Nijhoff.
McChesney, R. W. (2013). Digital disconnect: How capitalism is turning the internet against democracy. The New Press.
Mosinzova, V., Fabian, B., Ermakova, T., & Baumann, A. (2019, February 3). Fake news, conspiracies and myth debunking in social media-a literature survey across disciplines. Conspiracies and myth debunking in social media-a literature survey across disciplines.
Mößner, N., & Kitcher, P. (2017). Knowledge, democracy, and the internet. Minerva, 55(1), 1–24.CrossRef
Murphy, M. (2015). Unsettling care: Troubling transnational itineraries of care in feminist health practices. Social Studies of Science, 45(5), 717–737.CrossRef
Nelson, J. L., Lewis, D. A., & Lei, R. (2017). Digital democracy in America: A look at civic engagement in an internet age. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 94(1), 318–334.CrossRef
Owen, T. (2014). The ‘access to medicines campaign’ vs Big Pharma. Critical Discourse Studies, 11(3), 288–304.CrossRef
Pawson, R. (1995). Methods of content/document/media analysis. Developments in Sociology, 11, 107–107.
Pyysiäinen, J., Halpin, D., & Guilfoyle, A. (2017). Neoliberal governance and ‘responsibilization’of agents: Reassessing the mechanisms of responsibility-shift in neoliberal discursive environments. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 18(2), 215–235.CrossRef
Sattui, S. E., Liew, J. W., Graef, E. R., Coler-Reilly, A., Berenbaum, F., Duarte-García, A., et al. (2020). Swinging the pendulum: Lessons learned from public discourse concerning hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19. Expert Review of Clinical Immunology, 16(7), 659–666.CrossRef
Spivak, G. C. (1999). A critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present. Harvard University Press.CrossRef
Swain, K. A. (2005). Approaching the quarter-century mark: AIDS coverage and research decline as infection spreads. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22(3), 258–262.CrossRef
Thomson, I. (2000). From the question concerning technology to the quest for a democratic technology: Heidegger, Marcuse, Feenberg. Inquiry, 43(2), pp.203–215.
Thorgaard, K. (2014). Is evidence-based medicine about democratizing medical practice. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies, 15(1), 49–62.CrossRef
Tleyjeh, I., Kashour, Z., AlDosary, O., Riaz, M., Tlayjeh, H., Garbati, M. A., et al. (2020). The cardiac toxicity of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients: a systematic review and meta-regression analysis. medRxiv.
Trump, D. J. [realDonaldTrump] (2020, March 21). HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains - Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents) [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://​twitter.​com/​realDonaldTrump/​status/​1241367239900778​501
Tucker, J. A., Guess, A., Barberá, P., Vaccari, C., Siegel, A., Sanovich, S., et al. (2018, March 19). Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: A review of the scientific literature. Political polarization, and political disinformation: a review of the scientific literature.
Vaismoradi, M., Turunen, H., & Bondas, T. (2013). Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study. Nursing & Health Sciences, 15(3), 398–405.CrossRef
Veak, T. J. (Ed.). (2012). Democratizing technology: Andrew Feenberg's critical theory of technology. Suny Press.
Vos, T. P. (2012). ‘Homo journalisticus’: Journalism education’s role in articulating the objectivity norm. Journalism, 13(4), 435–449.CrossRef
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146–1151.CrossRef
Wachelder, J. (2003). Democratizing science: Various routes and visions of Dutch science shops. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 28(2), 244–273.CrossRef
Waisbord, S. (2018). Truth is what happens to news: On journalism, fake news, and post-truth. Journalism Studies, 19(13), 1866–1878.CrossRef
Ward, S. J. A. (2008). Truth and objectivity. In L. Wilkins & C. G. Christians (Eds.), The handbook of mass media ethics (pp. 71–83). Routledge.
Wardle, C., & Derekshan, H. (2017). Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making. Council of Europe report, DGI(2017)09.
Winston, M., & Edelbach, R. (2011). Society, ethics, and technology. Cengage Learning.
Wood, M. (2013). Has the internet been good for conspiracy theorising. PsyPAG Quarterly, 88, 31–34.
Woods, E. T., Schertzer, R., Greenfeld, L., Hughes, C., & Miller-Idriss, C. (2020). COVID-19, nationalism, and the politics of crisis: A scholarly exchange. Nations and Nationalism, 26, 807–825.CrossRef
Wray, K. B. (1999). A defense of Longino's social epistemology. Philosophy of Science, 66, S538–S552.CrossRef
Metadata
Title
Andrew Feenberg and the Distorted Democratization of Technology: Covid-19 and the Case of Hydroxychloroquine
Author
Tina Sikka
Copyright Year
2022
Book
The Necessity of Critique

Print ISBN: 978-3-031-07876-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-07877-4

Copyright Year: 2022

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07877-4_4

Premium Partners

    Image Credits