Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Transformations of Health in the Digital Society
- 2 Understanding Our Bodies through Datafication
- 3 Surveillance Cultures of the Digital Health Self
- 4 Discipline and Moralism of Our Health
- 5 Health ‘Disciples’: Technology ‘Addiction’ and Embodiment
- 6 Sharing ‘Healthiness’
- 7 Future Directions for the Digital Health Self
- References
- Index
3 - Surveillance Cultures of the Digital Health Self
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Transformations of Health in the Digital Society
- 2 Understanding Our Bodies through Datafication
- 3 Surveillance Cultures of the Digital Health Self
- 4 Discipline and Moralism of Our Health
- 5 Health ‘Disciples’: Technology ‘Addiction’ and Embodiment
- 6 Sharing ‘Healthiness’
- 7 Future Directions for the Digital Health Self
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores the role of surveillance when health is managed by and performed with the use of self-tracking and social media technologies in everyday life. By sharing health-related content on social media, users become representative of a community of like-minded ‘health’-orientated individuals, which they – even when nothing is being personally achieved – feel a part of. This is illustrated through the analysis of the empirical data, interviews, reflexive diaries and online content. This chapter explores how these practices positively and optimistically contribute to users’ sense of self and identity as informed, productive and improving ‘healthy’ beings, reflecting surveillance capitalism's techno-utopian ideologies in promoting the use of these platforms for sociality and as a tool for self and peer surveillance (Tufecki, 2008; boyd and Hargittai, 2010; Trottier, 2012; Lupton, 2014; Zuboff, 2019). Whilst this book recognises surveillance capitalism as the ‘new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales’ (Zuboff, 2015: np), this chapter predominantly focuses upon the impact of this logic on users (that is, consumers). These self-tracking and social media platforms tend to obfuscate their economic practices, technocommercial infrastructures and strategies (Moore and Robinson, 2016; Moore, 2017; Srincek, 2017; van Dijck et al, 2018; Lupton, 2019; Zuboff, 2019), whilst prompting and promoting users to engage and share their lifestyles, frequently presented as self-empowerment, personal optimisation and life improvement. Through the logic of surveillance capitalism, the economic infrastructures and extraction of value from data become opaque, and this lack of transparency mitigates further engagement via neoliberal selfresponsibilising and betterment strategies. The integral role of community surveillance is examined in how users’ self-survey with social media and self-tracking tools. This is often in consideration to how their social media community online may perceive them (imagined surveillance), the important role of feedback (or lack of), which pervasively reinforces these individuals’ sense of health self and continual engagement with these platforms of tools of surveillance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Digital Health SelfWellness, Tracking and Social Media, pp. 48 - 76Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023