Training, tracking, and traversing: digital materiality and the production of bodies and/in space in runners’ fitness tracking practices

Esmonde, Katelyn

doi:10.1080/02614367.2019.1661506

Cited by 28 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This embodiment of tracking devices echoes recent findings from another domain of self‐monitoring, that of sports fitness and wellbeing (e.g. Esmonde 2019a): The tracking device is involved in creating knowledge about the body, where some physical knowledge – such as the number of steps taken – is privileged over other physical experiences. However, this privileging can shift (cf.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Health technology identities and self. Patients’ appropriation of an assistive device for self‐management of chronic illness

Wienroth

Thomsen

Høstgaard

2020

Sociology Health & Illness

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent years, assistive technologies have gained acceptance as tools for supporting chronically ill patients in achieving improvements in physical activity. However, various healthcare and sociological studies show contradicting results regarding the physical and social impact of using such devices. This paper explores real-time user appropriation of an assistive monitoring/tracking device, the pedometer, in a healthcare intervention, with a particular focus on the technology identities users attribute to the pedometer. The study site was a rehabilitation programme at a local Danish health centre supporting patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. As part of this empirical study, six focus-group interviews were conducted with patients before and after they used pedometers. The analysis of respondents' accounts shows that monitoring devices become part of users' complex socio-technical ensembles in which the use of the device and its tracking of activity is constantly negotiated through experimentation with type and frequency of use; interpretation of knowledge and experience gained via the device; and negotiation of expectations, wellbeing, and the value of quantified knowledge for the management of chronic illness. On the basis of these findings the paper brings together and advances sociological scholarship on chronic illness, embodiment, the quantified self and technology adoption.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Health technology identities and self. Patients’ appropriation of an assistive device for self‐management of chronic illness

Wienroth

Thomsen

Høstgaard

2020

Sociology Health & Illness

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Seven papers used individual face-to-face interviews (Hardcastle et al, 2018;Lupton & Maslen, 2019;Maxwell et al, 2019;Nguyen et al, 2017;Ruckenstein, 2014;Schwennesen, 2017;Urban, 2017). Two papers used a running interview (Esmonde, 2019a(Esmonde, , 2019b. Three papers used telephone interviews (Lupton, 2019a;Lupton & Maslen, 2019;McCormack et al, 2019).…”

Section: Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women’s embodied experiences of using wearable digital self-tracking health technology: A review of the qualitative research literature

Busso

Brottveit

Løkkeberg

et al. 2021

Health Care for Women International

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this review we aimed to identify and synthesize the existing qualitative research literature on women's experiences of using wearable digital self-tracking health technology, and analytically explore the lived through and embodied aspects of self-tracking in the first-person accounts presented in this literature. Thirteen empirical studies conducted in Australia, USA, Canada, Denmark, Finland and Germany, and published within the time period 2014 to 2019, were identified through systematic searches in relevant databases, and analyzed using a method of interpretive metasynthesis. Our analysis suggests that women experienced gaining access to bodily information that was otherwise experienced as hidden through using a wearable device, and that experiencing feelings was integral to their self-tracking practices and experiences. We thus identified two core themes across the included studies: Embodying the knowing self and Embodying strong feelings. Our review contributes to the existing literature by outlining and describing an emerging body of research across different health related disciplines, and makes a theoretical contribution by highlighting the need to minimize emotional labor and to provide the opportunity for embodying agency in the context of the selftracking activities of patients and consumers. In addition we suggests methodological ways forward in producing detailed and nuanced knowledge about the practices and implications of women's use of digital self-tracking health technology.

show abstract

“…In recent years there has been a proliferation of academic interest in the practice of digital selftracking. Researchers have drawn attention to questions including who self-tracks and why people self-track (Lupton 2017;Goodyear, Kerner, and Quennerstedt 2019) and others have highlighted some of the different ways that digital self-tracking devices are used and what it feels like to self-track (Esmonde 2019;Fotopoulou and O'Riordan 2017). With a few notable exceptions, limited research has focused on digital self-tracking as a social practice, particularly in the context of sport and physical activity (Lupton 2017;Pink et al 2017).…”

Section: Digital Self-tracking and The 'Quantified Self'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first is to describe what Strava is, what it looks like, and what it affords its users, but also to consider what it might have the power to do. Second, I hope to highlight some of the ways and reasons Strava is used by recreational runners, a group that has been the subject of many previous studies but, with a few notable exceptions (Esmonde 2019(Esmonde , 2020, has seldom been the focus of self-tracking studies. Finally, I attempt to give voice to some of the methodological tensions and experiences of doing research in 'ethnographic places' (Postil and Pink 2012) that transcend a discretely online or offline field of study by weaving ethnographic field notes into the text as narrative vignettes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflections from the ‘Strava-sphere’: Kudos, community, and (self-)surveillance on a social network for athletes

Couture

2020

Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Training, tracking, and traversing: digital materiality and the production of bodies and/in space in runners’ fitness tracking practices

Cited by 28 publications

References 58 publications

Health technology identities and self. Patients’ appropriation of an assistive device for self‐management of chronic illness

Health technology identities and self. Patients’ appropriation of an assistive device for self‐management of chronic illness

Women’s embodied experiences of using wearable digital self-tracking health technology: A review of the qualitative research literature

Reflections from the ‘Strava-sphere’: Kudos, community, and (self-)surveillance on a social network for athletes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About