This paper examines how pregnant women living in South Australia use information and communication technologies (ICTs), principally Internet and mobile phones, to access pregnancy-related information. It draws on 35 semistructured interviews conducted as part of the 'Health-e Baby' project, a qualitative study designed to assess the information needs and ICT preferences of pregnant women cared for at a South Australian metropolitan teaching hospital. Our research shows that although ICTs offer exciting possibilities for health promotion and the potential for new forms of communication, networking and connection, we cannot assume the effectiveness of communicating through such channels, despite near universal levels of ICT access. In turn, this highlights that if e-mediated health promotion is to be effective, health promoters and practitioners need to better understand ICT access, usage and content preferences of their clients.

BackgroundThe use of mobile technology such as phone applications (apps) has been proposed as an efficient means of providing health and clinical information in a variety of healthcare settings. We developed the Health-e Babies app as an Android smart phone application for pregnant women attending a tertiary hospital in a low socio-economic community, with the objective of providing health information about early pregnancy that would increase maternal confidence and reduce anxiety. Based on our earlier research, this form of health communication was viewed as a preferred source of information for women of reproductive age. However, the pilot study had a poor participation rate with 76% (n = 94) not completing the study requirements. These initial findings raised some very important issues in relation to the difficulties of engaging women with a pregnancy app. This paper analyses the characteristics of the participants who did not complete the study requirements in an attempt to identify potential barriers associated with the implementation of a pregnancy app.MethodsThis retrospective review of quantitative and qualitative data collected at the commencement of the Health-e Babies App trial, related to the participant’s communication technology use, confidence in knowing where to seek help and mental health status, maternal-fetal attachment and parenting confidence. Engagement and use of the Health-e Babies App was measured by the completion of a questionnaire about the app and downloaded data from participant’s phones. Mental health status, confidence and self-efficacy were measured by questionnaires.ResultsAll women were similar in terms of age, race, marital status and level of education. Of the 94 women (76%) who did not complete the trial, they were significantly more anxious as indicated by State Trait Anxiety Inventory (p = 0.001 Student T-test) and more likely to be unemployed (50% vs 31%, p = 0.012 Student T-Test).ConclusionThis study provides important information about the challenges associated with the implementation of a pregnancy app in a socially disadvantaged community. The data suggests that factors including social and mental health issues, financial constraints and technological ability can affect women’s engagement with a mobile phone app.

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/ Co-creative relations among professional media producers and consumers indicate a profound shift in which our frameworks and categories of analysis (such as the traditional labour theory of value) that worked well in the context of an industrial media economy are perhaps less helpful than before. Can this phenomenon just be explained as the exploitative extraction of surplus value from the work of users, or is something else, potentially more profound and challenging, playing out here? Does consumer co-creation contribute to the precarious conditions of professional creative workers? This article draws from ethnographic research undertaken from 2000 to 2005 with Auran games (a game development company based in Brisbane, Australia) to engage with debates about the status of user co-creation as labour. The article argues that as a hybrid and emergent social network market these relationships introduce a form of creative destruction to labour relations in the context of the creative industries.