Digital contact tracing is used in different countries to help contain the COVID-19 pandemic. It raises challenging empirical and ethical questions due to its complexity and widespread effects calling for a broader approach in ethical evaluation. However, existing approaches often fail to include all relevant value perspectives or lack reference to empirical data on the artifact in question. In this paper, we describe the development of an interdisciplinary framework to analyze digital contact tracing from an empirical and ethical perspective. Starting (...) with an analysis of methodological tensions in the attempt to analyze digital contact tracing, we, firstly, set out three methodological premises regarding (a) a specific view of technology, (b) a fruitful normative perspective, and (c) ways to gather empirical knowledge about the object under investigation. Secondly, we inspect consequences of these premises to develop our research methodology. In doing so, we argue for a postphenomenological perspective on technology, solidarity as an important concept to guide the ethical perspective, and an empirical approach based on qualitative social science research and the concept of affordances. We illustrate these considerations by referring to our analysis of the German Corona-Warn-App as an instance of contact tracing based on the Exposure Notification Framework by Google and Apple. We then discuss the implications of using such a framework, including considerations concerning future developments of technologies similar to or inspired by the current concepts of contact tracing. (shrink)

I argue that the concept of an epistemic interface is a useful one to add to the epistemic ecology toolkit in order to enrich our investigations concerning the complex epistemic phenomena arising on social media. An epistemic interface is defined as any informational interface (be it technical, human or institutional) that facilitates the transfer of epistemic goods from one epistemic environment to its outside, be that another epistemic environment or a person. When assessing the kinds of epistemic environments emerging on (...) social media platforms, we should not only look at their epistemic health or hostility as environments, but also look at how these environments interact with each other, at their interfacing. I show that several epistemic problems specific to social media such as epistemic bubbles, echo chambers and epistemic flooding can be understood also in terms of faulty epistemic interfacing, which adds a layer of complexity to the discussion. The paper proposes two criteria for healthy epistemic interfacing: preserving the flourishing of epistemic agents, and preserving in some form the value of epistemic outcomes as these cross the environment to the outside world. These criteria should give rise to specific norms and design requirements for healthy interfacing, but such norms will need more empirical work before these get formulated. (shrink)