Information, influence, ritual, participation: Defining digital sexual health

Abstract

This article draws on Epstein's theorisations of the ‘ideal’ of sexual health and wellbeing to argue that young people's access to digital sexual health content should not be understood primarily as a process of ‘information seeking’. Where digital practices are too narrowly viewed through a lens of information seeking and transmission, there may be an excessive focus on whether sexual health content is ‘factual’ – overlooking the question of whether it is meaningful in specific cultural contexts. We link contemporary digital sexual health cultures to the complex – and politicised – histories of popular mediated sexual health communication that underpin them. Exploring alternative theoretical frames – including pornographic vernaculars, influencer pedagogies, media as ritual, and situated peripheral learning in digital communities – we conclude that redefining and refocusing dominant understandings of ‘good’ sexual health content may generate new and productive strategies for engaging with marginal and disaffected digital sexual cultures.

Understanding digital period pedagogies: Exploring how young people navigate menstruation through embodied experience

“…We build upon this thinking to understand (digital) period pedagogies as assembled and produced through overlapping encounters between discourse, embodied experience, media and technology. In line with Byron (2021) and Albury and Hendry (2022), we acknowledge how deeply entangled digital content and digital practices are in the ways young people make sense of their bodies and identities. Therefore, our intent is not to parse out, evaluate or construct boundaries around the knowledges that young menstruators glean from digital sources but rather seek to examine how they are assembled alongside other sources of knowledge.…”

“…there's more distance between that. This account speaks to the affordances of social media platforms to cultivate a sense of intimacy, familiarity and closeness between content creator and their audiences (Abidin, 2017;Albury and Hendry, 2022;Byron, 2021;Southerton and Clark, 2022). While a lack of qualifications and authority has been flagged as an indicator of a lack of credibility and trustworthiness when it comes to health information on social media (Wang et al, 2019), our participants were largely not seeking expert advice but wanted experiential accounts of menstruation to draw on to build their body pedagogies (Rich and Evans, 2007).…”

“…While digital sociologists acknowledge the limitations and potential dangers of digital media use, they argue that a conceptual shift is needed when studying young people’s relationships with digital media and everyday media practices (Albury and Hendry, 2022; Byron, 2021). These scholars suggest digital technologies are embedded so deeply in the everyday practices of young people that they do not intentionally seek out or turn to online sources of information as much as they encounter meanings and knowledges circulating within their networked relations.…”

“…Digital spaces have become increasingly important sites for the production and dissemination of health-related information and play a salient role in the lives of young people navigating personal health and wellness as well as gendered identities, sexuality, politics and peer relationships (Boyd, 2008;Byron, 2021;Goodyear et al, 2019;Green and Brady, 2013). Communication scholars and digital sociologists have recently focused attention on how digital media shape the ways in which young people learn about and negotiate various aspects of sexuality (Albury and Hendry, 2022;De Ridder, 2017;Hendry, 2017). There is agreement that young people's everyday digital practices are deeply interconnected with their everyday embodied experiences of wellbeing and that sexual/health educational approaches are likely to be more effective when these relationships are acknowledged.…”

Special Issue: What do misinformation practices feel like? Embodiment, health and digital spaces

“…Albury and Hendry's article ‘Information, influence, ritual, participation: Defining digital sexual health’, also considers the messiness of regimes of knowledge production and circulation. In their engagement with sexual health education, Albury and Hendry (2022) take a pedagogically informed approach to learning about the ‘right’ type of sexual health information. Their thoughtful analysis highlights how epidemiological metaphors (like ‘viral’ and ‘contagion’) are often used in traditional quantitative or information-based approaches to describe media practices.…”