Affective Experiences of Error

This article uncovers a case of sociotechnical error in the production of COVID dashboards. Our broader study included interviews with 79 people who participated in developing and maintaining COVID dashboard projects in the United States and India during the first 18 months of the pandemic—workers we call COVID “data builders.” We report on a subset of our interview data, focusing on participants’ affective experiences of error involving two U.S.-based dashboards. The case examines how data builders created an error in COVID data early in the pandemic. The error, a typo in the data, was propagated through various COVID data infrastructures and led data builders to question their place in the COVID data ecosystem as they interpreted how data was being harvested, accessed, reused, and repurposed and how their work was valued in the mainstream media. We show how the data builders’ affective experience of the mistake, and its propagation emerged from ongoing encounters with racism and pandemic vulnerability and led to feelings of jealousy and anger in their data labor.