Conflict and communication: managing the multiple affordances of take-home naloxone administration events in Australia

Enacting ‘more-than-human’ care: Clients’ and counsellors’ views on the multiple affordances of chatbots in alcohol and other drug counselling

“…That is, the full replacement of human actors with chatbots within online care was viewed as undermining the important empathic qualities desired in care encounters. In view of recent critical drug studies scholarship on care (see Dennis, 2019 ; Duncan et al., 2019 ; Farrugia et al., 2019 ), these participants’ accounts challenge the notion that chatbots are able to satisfy one element of caring : the affective component of helping people to feel a certain way.…”

“…Moreover, the ‘human element’ was viewed as an essential part of care that should be maintained. Viewed in light of recent critical work on ‘care’ ( Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017 ; Dennis, 2019 ; Duncan et al., 2019 ; Farrugia et al., 2019 ; Mol, 2008 ), our participants’ concerns raise important ethico-political questions about the future of online care. Specifically, if the affective practices definitional to care, that is, care characterised by empathy and mutual understanding, are undermined or foreclosed by the use of chatbots in online counselling, exactly what type of ‘care’ materialises in these settings?…”

“…This innovative approach to hepatitis C prevention treats the sexual partnership as the primary unit of intervention and aims to generate new affordances or possibilities for prevention. Socio-material approaches to affordances have since been productively applied to analyse a range of phenomena including the uses and effects of naloxone (an overdose reversal drug) ( Farrugia et al., 2019 ), supervised drug consumption sites ( Boyd et al., 2020 ) and, related to our own work, the relationship between online counselling platforms and therapeutic outcomes ( Dilkes-Frayne, Savic, Carter, Kokanović, & Lubman, 2019 ). The concept of affordances has also been mobilised in a study of the gender affordances of chatbots, specifically how the gender of a chatbot influences users’ engagement with it ( Brahnam & De Angeli, 2012 ).…”

“…Given the potential for care to materialise as coercive, and given that some forms of care (e.g., between people who consume drugs) are routinely obscured, care is political, contested and implicated in the making and maintenance of particular realities ( Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017 ; Mol, 2008 ; Martin et al., 2015 ; Murphy, 2015 ). Recent critical drug studies scholarship has similarly approached care as an ethico-political pursuit and productively traced the social, affective and material practices that bring care into being, or otherwise constrain, or foreclose specific care practices in relation to injecting drug use ( Dennis, 2019 ), naloxone ( Farrugia et al., 2019 ), and drug consumption rooms ( Duncan et al., 2019 ). Inspired by this work, we examine the affordances and limits of AI technologies for online care, paying particular attention to the social, affective and material actors at play.…”

Overdoselifesavers.org: a mixed-method evaluation of a public information website on experiences of overdose and using take-home naloxone to save lives

“…Recent research suggests that for some opioid consumers, take-home naloxone uptake is implicated in a broader ethic of care that incorporates concerns beyond overdose revival (Farrugia et al, 2019). Building on this point, Farrugia et al (2020) argue that opioid consumers who access take-home naloxone have developed administration techniques to generate calm, comfortable and caring revival experiences where possible. Most recently, Parkin et al (2020) argue that takehome naloxone initiatives need to offer training on how to respond to conflictual overdose revival situations (see also, Farrugia et al, 2020).…”