3. Vernetzte Gesundheit

Visibilities and the Analysis of Interdiscourse: The Case of Digital Health Practices

“…For example, small digital mini apparatuses—so-called wearables —can be used to produce and disseminate digital information during fitness activities and preventive health care practices. The users and the digital information thus produced become part of a network and an interaction in which users’ digital information is set in relation to, or context with, other information (Bellinger, 2014). Wearables can present information on very different bodily functions (e.g., blood pressure, muscle tension, heart rate) or highly different practices (e.g., sleep rhythm, number of steps run, number of calories burned).…”

“…The use of wearables—that is, self-reliant (preventive) promotion of good health—can, therefore, be understood as a socioculturally appropriate practice. At the same time, the produced and shared body data are strategically important for business, politics, and science in the sense of smart data governance (health data statistics and big data; Bellinger, 2014; Drösser & Stillich, 2014; Engemann, 2004; Lupton, 2012). The strategic importance of health data is nothing new per se ; the collection and compilation of societal data and the accompanying construction of the social normativity dispositif have existed for the past 200 years (Foucault, 1963/2003, 2005) and have played a crucial role in medical work and the performance of the modern patient’s body (Berg & Bowker, 1997).…”