What is Quarantine

Home/self-quarantines have never been applied in such broad territorial range (across the globe, in real time; in mega-cities) or with such large numbers of people as during the COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 outbreak (Nov. 2019 – present). As data started coming in about the viral outbreak, government leaders and public health officials instituted mass-scale quarantines: first, the quarantine of Wuhan, the megacity of 11 million at the epicenter of the outbreak, then the People's Republic of China, then a cruise ship, then cities in South Korea, then Japan, then Italy, and elsewhere. There have been rolling quarantines across particular regions as extended diagnostics capabilities came online. In this time, macro, meso, and micro-scale quarantines have been instituted and have mostly held. On social media, many under self-quarantine in their homes (“sheltering in place”) have shared messaging and social imagery about their experiences. This work studies social image sharing on social media platforms as a digital service in a time of global emergency four months into the outbreak.