‘Tele-Crisis’: Co-production of Crisis and Information and Communication Technologies

Developed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this special issue aims to critically explore how information and communication technologies and crises are co-produced historically. To capture this complex interplay, we coined and use the nonce word of ‘tele-crisis’. We primarily define ‘tele-crisis’ as the moment in time when communication infrastructures’ critical role in sociotechnical entanglements becomes visible—experienced, debated, and imagined, or memorised. This visibilisation, we argue, has effects on both the information and communication technologies and the regulation of sociotechnical entanglements through which social orders are maintained and reproduced.