Self-tracking modes: reflexive self-monitoring and data practices

The concept of ‘self-tracking’ (also referred to as life-logging, the quantified self, personal analytics and personal informatics) has recently begun to emerge in discussions of ways in which people can voluntarily monitor and record specific features of their lives, often using digital technologies. There is evidence that the personal data that are derived from individuals engaging in such reflexive self-monitoring are now beginning to be used by actors, agencies and organisations beyond the personal and privatised realm. Self-tracking rationales and sites are proliferating as part of a ‘function creep’ of the technology and ethos of self-tracking. The detail offered by these data on individuals and the growing commodification and commercial value of digital data have led government, managerial and commercial enterprises to explore ways of appropriating self-tracking for their own purposes. In some contexts people are encouraged, ‘nudged’, obliged or coerced into using digital devices to produce personal data which are then used by others. This paper examines these issues, outlining five modes of self-tracking that have emerged: private, communal, pushed, imposed and exploited. The analysis draws upon theoretical perspectives on concepts of selfhood, citizenship, biopolitics and data practices and assemblages in discussing the wider sociocultural implications of the emergence and development of these modes of self-tracking

“Remember a condition of academic writing is that we expose ourselves to critique” – 15 steps to revising journal articles

Before having your paper accepted for publication in a peer reviewed journal you’ll almost certainly be required to revise your manuscript at least once. But for less experienced authors this may not always feel so straightforward. Deborah Lupton has compiled a list of quick tips for authors who have been asked to revise their article. Remember that being exposed to critique is an inevitable part of academic writing, challenge yourself to improve your work, address all reviewer comments, and you’ll be ready to resubmit

The Commodification of Patient Opinion: the Digital Patient Experience Economy in the Age of Big Data

As part of the digital health phenomenon, a plethora of interactive digital platforms have been established in recent years to elicit lay people’s experiences of illness and healthcare. The function of these platforms, as expressed on the main pages of their websites, is to provide the tools and forums whereby patients and caregivers, and in some cases medical practitioners, can share their experiences with others, benefit from the support and knowledge of other contributors and contribute to large aggregated data archives as part of developing better medical treatments and services and conducting medical research. However what may not always be readily apparent to the users of these platforms are the growing commercial uses by many of the platforms’ owners of the archives of the data they contribute. This article examines this phenomenon of what I term ‘the digital patient experience economy’. In so doing I discuss such aspects as prosumption, the phenomena of big data and metric assemblages, the discourse and ethic of sharing and the commercialisation of affective labour via such platforms. I argue that via these online platforms patients’ opinions and experiences may be expressed in more diverse and accessible forums than ever before, but simultaneously they have become exploited in novel ways

Digitized health promotion: personal responsibility for health in the Web 2.0 era

The new apparatus of what is often termed ‘digital health’ (and also ‘Health 2.0’, ‘Medicine 2.0’, eHealth’ or ‘mHealth’), a conglomeration of new digital technologies addressed at delivering healthcare, preventive medicine and health promotion, has facilitated a focus on measuring and monitoring the functions and activities of lay people’s bodies and encouraging self-care among patients with chronic diseases. It is upon this new approach to identifying and preventing ill health and disease that this working paper focuses. While the digital health approach to the body and health spans the arc from patient care to public health surveillance techniques, the discussion here largely is directed at the implications for the digital health ‘revolution’ in relation to the practice of health promotion; or what I refer to as ‘digitized health promotion’. It is argued that despite concerted efforts on the part of those advocating for a less individualistic approach to health promotion since the 1970s and drawing attention to the social determinants of health, digital health technologies as they are advocated for promoting health represent a renewed focus on personal responsibility for health. In the discourses and practices of digitized health promotion, health risks have become increasingly individualized and viewed as manageable and controllable as long as lay people adopt the appropriate technologies to engage in self-monitoring and self-care. With the advent of the big data produced by digital technologies and the use of sophisticated algorithms to manipulate these data, it has become ever more convenient to focus attention on personal responsibility for health states. The digitalized health promotion phenomenon, therefore, operates as one dimension of the progressive withdrawal of the state in many developed countries from attempting to challenge the social and economic factors causing ill health and disease and efforts to promote social justice

Revolting Bodies: the Pedagogy of Disgust in Public Health Campaigns

The developers of public health campaigns have often attempted to elicit the emotion of disgust to persuade members of their target audiences to change their behaviour in the interests of their health. This article identifies and analyses the dominant types of disgust that were employed in a collection of public health campaign texts. It was found that ‘animal reminder’ disgust, ‘liminality’ disgust, ‘matter out of place’ disgust and ‘moral’ disgust were all used in various ways in the campaign materials examined. The implications for how the human body, health and illness are conceptualised and understood and the moral meanings that are related to disgust responses are discussed. It is argued that the use of disgust in public health campaigns has serious political and ethical implications. Advocates of using such tactics should be aware of the challenge they pose to human dignity and their perpetuation of the Self and Other binary opposition that marginalises and stigmatises already disadvantaged individuals and social group

M-health and health promotion: the digital cyborg and surveillance society

The new mobile wireless computer technologies and social media applications using Web 2.0 platforms have recently received attention from those working in health promotion as a promising new way of achieving their goals of preventing ill-health and promoting healthy behaviours at the population level. There is very little critical examination in this literature of how the use of these digital technologies may affect the targeted groups, in terms of the implications for how individuals experience embodiment, selfhood and social relationships. This article addresses these issues, employing a range of social and cultural theories to do so. It is argued that m-health technologies produce a digital cyborg body. They are able to act not only as prostheses but also as interpreters of the body. The subject produced through the use of m-health technologies is constructed as both an object of surveillance and persuasion and as a responsible citizen who is willing and able to act on the health imperatives issuing forth from the technologies and to present their body/self as open to continual measurement and assessment. The implications of this new way of surveilling the body’s health are discussed

Digital sociology: beyond the digital to the sociological

The sub-discipline of digital sociology has recently begun to attract attention among sociologists, particularly in the UK. In this paper I undertake a review of some of the most interesting features of the body of digital sociology scholarship as it has thus far emerged. Some might contend that digital sociology is simply a new name for a long-established sociological research interest in computerised and online technologies. However I argue that digital sociology as it has developed in the UK in particular has distinguished itself by developing a distinctive theoretical approach that raises important questions concerning the nature of social research and of sociology as a discipline and a practice in the age of the digital. As such, digital sociology has much broader implications than simply the study of digital technologies

Infant embodiment and interembodiment

This article brings together a range of research and scholarship from various disciplines which have investigated and theorised social and cultural aspects of infants’ bodies within the context of contemporary western societies. It begins with a theoretical overview of dominant concepts of infants’ bodies, including discussion of the concepts of the unfinished body, civility and the Self/Other binary opposition as well as that of interembodiment, drawn from the work of Merleau-Ponty. Then follows discussion of the pleasures and challenging aspects of interembodiment in relation to caregivers’ interactions with infants’ bodies, purity, danger and infant embodiment and lastly practices of surveilling the vulnerable, ‘at risk’ infant body

Beyond the 'affect heuristic': the emotion-risk assemblage

Little sociological research, with the notable exception of that on edgework, has focused directly on the emotional dimensions of risk rationalities. This space has largely been occupied by cognitive psychological approaches, particularly the ‘affect heuristic’ model. In this model, emotion is singled out as separate from and often in opposition to cognition. Emotional responses to risk are positioned as irrational and potentially misleading because they are viewed as emerging from the body and not from the mind. In this paper I argue that the theorising of the emotional dimensions of risk must recognise their fluid, dynamic and often contradictory and ambivalent nature. I take a relativist approach to both risk and emotion, and contend that emotion configures risk and risk configures emotion, and that aspects such as embodiment and location in space and place are important in these configurations. I propose the concept of the ‘emotion-risk assemblage’ as a way of acknowledging the contingent, constantly changing and inextricable aspects of the emotion and risk relationship. This concept avoids the attempt to position emotion as either rational or irrational, contending instead that it may better be viewed as one form of thinking