pregnancy apps and the digital knowledge economy
DESCRIPTION
Paper given at the Reproductive Biopolitics workshop, University of Sydney, 3 October 2014TRANSCRIPT
Digitising pregnancy: new ways of monitoring, measuring and
visualising unborn and pregnant bodies
Deborah Lupton, News & Media Research Centre, University of
Canberra@DALupton
Intersections of research interests
pregnancy + motherhood
digital health
big datadigital sociology
digitised children
Apps as sociocultural artefacts
apps
human decision-making
tech affordances
tacit assumptions
digital knowledge economy
Apps as knowledge objects
• they present knowledges• they reproduce knowledges• they create knowledges
Health apps as domestic medical devices
• They monitor bodies’ functions and activities• They convey health and medical information• They diagnose• They can link to healthcare providers or health
insurers
Types of pregnancy apps 1
preconception care
fertility trackers
pregnancy information
pregnancy monitoring
baby names
labour/birth information
labour/birth monitoring
Types of pregnancy apps 2
information for fathers
pregnancy-related games
meditation/affirmation/relaxation in pregnancy/birth
baby products guides
pregnancy journals/scrapbooks
pregnant belly time lapse tool
BabyBump Pregnancy Free
BabyBump Pregnancy Free
Happy Pregnancy Ticker
Bellabeat
Glow + Glow Nurture
Glow Nurture
Glow Nurture
Glow Nurture
Glow Nurture
How popular are they?
• I’m Expecting – Pregnancy App (over 40,000 ratings, 1-5 million downloads on Google Play)
• BabyBump Pregnancy Free (over 30,000 ratings, 1-5 million downloads on Google Play)
Implications 1
• reproducing and creating norms of pregnancy• disciplining and responsibilising the pregnant
body• separation of unborn body from pregnant
body• privileging of unborn needs/rights over
woman’s
Implications 2
• pregnant woman as valuable commodity/target for marketing
• pregnant woman as data-emitting body• personal data used for monitoring by health
insurance companies (US)• joining up of different datasets/data doubles• circulations/repurposing of data• cybernetic nature of data
lively data
emotion
aesthetics
lively capitaldata
subjects/doubles
flow & circulation
multiple uses/repurposing