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

Abstract

This contribution examines the study of interdiscourses in visual discourse analysis. An expanded theory of interdiscursivity considers the integration, plausibility, and popularization of meanings, offering a perspective on ways of legitimating interventions and instructions or guidelines for action. Based on the reconstruction of meaning assignments, the expanded interdiscourse theory presented here opens up the possibility of tracing how power is exercised through the occupation of particular discourse positions, whether these are of a linguistic or of a pictorial/visual nature. With reference to poststructuralist theories, assignments of meaning are seen as inherently temporary and unstable. Whatever social reality is, it remains at least partially ambiguous and is determined anew in conflicts or tensions surrounding hegemonic negotiations. Visual discourse analysis thus focuses on the precarious nature of hegemony-building processes. How such adjustments of meaning through visualizations can be investigated within the framework of interdiscursive analysis is discussed using the example of the digitalization of body data via wearables.

On New Forms of Science Communication and Communication in Science: A Videographic Approach to Visuality in Science Slams and Academic Group Talk

“…Through our triangulated videographic approach, we can assert that indeed a performative self has taken center stage and that a number of situational constraints and institutionalized (presentational) norms are at play here. On another level, this visuality-driven subjectivation also extends toward users of technologies generated by scientists, as Urban (2018) demonstrates in her research on wearables in the health sector.…”

Introduction

“…In her ethnographic study of a home emergency call, Carolin Kollewe (2017) shows how the experience of security (through the call) is simultaneously accompanied by the experience of insecurity (through the same), and how older users develop practices for coping with insecurity. Mona Urban (2017Urban ( , 2019 makes the normativity of technical assistance systems visible in her work when she describes how, for example, smart bed sensors influence the sexual activity of older people. Cordula Endter (2016Endter ( , 2018Endter ( , 2021 shows the consequences that the insufficient participation of older people in technological development has for the age-appropriate development of these technologies and the ways that deficitoriented images of age already determine funding programmes in the context of technological innovation for older people.…”

Digital Dentistry: Pandemics, Problems, And Panaceas

“…Digital health was assumed to offer a more effective and less expensive healthcare system compared to current forms of healthcare. 6 Digital health is also deemed to promote and encourage self-responsibility through self-tracking devices. 7 During the pandemic, the prospect of a digitally mediated healthcare was no longer a theoretical argument.…”