Liberalists and data-solutionists: redefining expertise in Twitter debates on coronavirus in Finland

Based on recent accounts of the sociology of expertise, we analyse the
public contestation and expansion of expertise in the context of COVID-19.
During the epidemic, the expertise of the Finnish Institute for Health and
Welfare (THL), became increasingly contested. By exploring Twitter
discussions concerning the actions of THL during the first months of the
epidemic from January to mid-June 2020, we analyse the main motivations
and arguments in this public contestation as well as the alternative forms of
expertise proposed by the critics. We focus particularly on two forms of
criticism arguing for what we call networked expertise: liberal
crowdsourcing supporters and data-solutionists presenting alternative
epidemiological models.