Your health in numbers. A sociological analysis of two Quantified-self Communities

Journal title SALUTE E SOCIETÀ
Author/s Barbara Morsello, Veronica Moretti
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2017/3-Suppl.
Language English Pages 14 P. 214-227 File size 87 KB
DOI 10.3280/SES2017-SU3014
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This article describes and analyzes how members of QS communities conceptualize and in-terpret data about themselves, and in particular, about their health. Our methodology is based on twenty semi-structured interviews with members of Quantified-self communities based in Turin, Italy and Cambridge, U.K. The results of these interviews show how self-measurement practices help to facilitate better management of one’s health, especially when health-management is considered in a broader framework of general self-improvement. Furthermore, although self-tracking heightens users’ health-related competence - and in turn, seems to reduce the traditional jurisdiction of doctors - an overarching frame of medicalization remains intact; indeed, the alleged "scientificness" of the self-quantification involved in self-tracking itself exemplifies the medicalization of daily life.

Keywords: Quantified-self community; health; prevention; diagnosis; therapy; medicalization.

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  • Digital Health and the Gamification of Life: How Apps Can Promote a Positive Medicalization pp.157 (ISBN:978-1-78754-366-9)

Barbara Morsello, Veronica Moretti, Your health in numbers. A sociological analysis of two Quantified-self Communities in "SALUTE E SOCIETÀ" 3-Suppl./2017, pp 214-227, DOI: 10.3280/SES2017-SU3014