The Rackham Graduate School of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, has named Youngrim Kim, a 2022 Ph.D. alumna of the school, the recipient of a 2022 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award for her dissertation “Pandemic Data Publics: Surveillance Culture and Civic Action in Times of Public Health Emergencies.”
Kim, an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at SC&I, received the award at a ceremony held at the University of Michigan on April 25, 2023. This prestigious award recognizes only the top 10 of the approximately 800 dissertations defended in 2022 by University of Michigan graduate students.
“Each year truly exceptional dissertations are recognized with the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards,” Mike Solomon, Dean and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at the Rackham Graduate School, wrote in the event program. “Faculty who have served as chairs of dissertation committees nominate outstanding students who have completed their dissertations. These nominations are reviewed by a faculty panel and then read closely by postdoctoral fellows who are members of the Michigan Society of Fellows, a unique interdisciplinary community of outstanding scholars.
“The awards are co-sponsored by ProQuest, a global information-content and technology company based in Ann Arbor that publishes more than 200,000 dissertations and theses annually, including more than 800 by University of Michigan graduate students. We are delighted to have ProQuest as a partner in celebrating the accomplishments of these scholars and recognizing the excellence of their doctoral dissertations.”
Kim said her dissertation “examines the politics surrounding state-initiated digital health platforms that are built to manage global health crises, through the case study of two infectious disease outbreaks in South Korea: the 2015 MERS Epidemic and COVID-19.”
Specifically, she uncovers how data-driven surveillance systems were built and mobilized for new forms of policing of "risky" bodies. Drawing from 16 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in South Korea, where she engaged with state officials, technologists, public health experts, data activists, and human rights advocacy groups, Kim traced the tension and collaboration between the state, tech industry, and civil society in building Korea’s data-driven governance of global health emergencies.
“This dissertation," Kim said, "reveals that what started as public initiatives to build efficient and reliable tools to control the virus’s spread, transformed into systematic regimes of surveillance and data disclosure set upon communities vulnerable to public health risks. In South Korea, migrant workers and LGBTQ+ communities became subject to mandatory surveillance for the transparent and efficient control of local ‘hot zones.’ I argue that these technologies played critical roles in creating a pandemic culture that has renewed exclusionary forms of citizenship and national identity in South Korea -- ironically, in the name of trust, transparency, and care.”
Discover more about the Journalism and Media Studies Department at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.
Photo: Courtesy of Youngrim Kim
