The right to stay offline? Not during the pandemic

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented event which is transforming societies and strengthening the bond between human and technology. However, less attention is paid to nonusers of the Internet. To combat the pandemic, the Polish government introduced, in June 2020, a new policy that made it possible for citizens who had lost their job as a consequence of the crisis to obtain financial support. The application for this allowance was, however, possible only via an online platform. The paper discusses how this violated the right of the unemployed to stay offline.

KEYWORDS:

• Internet
• nonusers
• COVID-19
• policy implementation
• Poland
• e-government
• allowance

Acknowledgments

My research on digital decision, including this paper, was inspired by a lot of users and–perhaps more importantly–nonusers of the Internet. It was supported by the National Science Centre in Poland under Grant No. 2019/33/N/HS4/01178.

Notes

1. Despite their rapid change, the statistics, predictions and legal regulations presented in the paper were deliberately not updated while revising the paper before the publication, in order to show the context in which the discussed policy was implemented by the Polish government. The pandemic has left a far more bigger mark on the Polish society since that time (for current statistics, see “COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic,” 2020), which has also forced the government into further intervention not discussed here.

2. “One-stop, single-point services in which all citizen-government interactions (…) can be conducted with a single digital identification” (Eggers et al., 2020, p. 24).

3. The elections were scheduled for 10 May 2020. Because of the pandemic, they were postponed to June 28, a few days after the Act had come into force. Finally, Duda won narrowly in the run-off on July 12. Also, some journalists often described the allowance as “Duda’s allowance” or “Duda’s solidarity allowance” (Pacholczyk, 2020; Szymczak, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre in Poland [2019/33/N/HS4/01178].

Notes on contributors

Oskar Wolski

Oskar Wolski holds a PhD in social sciences. He is interested in rural development, local and regional development, and their intersections with technology, as well as the selected issues of rural geography. His recent research focuses on “digital decision” and motivations for going online and offline in geographical terms. He is a member of the Commission of Rural Areas of the Polish Geographical Society.