IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v270y2021ics0277953621000071.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Cultivation of Digital Health Citizenship

Author

Listed:
  • Petrakaki, Dimitra
  • Hilberg, Eva
  • Waring, Justin

Abstract

Contemporary health policy discourse renders individuals responsible for managing their health by means of digital technology. Seeing the digital as productive of citizenship, rather than facilitative of it, this paper unpacks the contested role of technology in acts of digital health citizenship. Drawing on longitudinal data collected in the English healthcare context, this article shows that digital health citizenship is produced through patients' involvement in the generation of health knowledge, including ‘big’ health data, digital artefacts, experiential knowledge and service feedback. The paper adds to existing literature by disaggregating the contested role of technology in displays of digital health citizenship, showing that digital health technology can give rise to expressions of altruism, belonging, and demands for recognition and change in healthcare, whilst responsibilising citizens for the care of themselves and others. The discussion shows how, rather than merely facilitating the actions of a free and autonomous subject, this citizenship often becomes algorithmically produced (e.g. through nudges) and remains isolated to separate instances of engagement without a long-term orientation. Our study enriches the growing sociological literature on health citizenship by exploring how digital technology produces health citizenship at the intersection of biosociality and technosociality.

Suggested Citation

  • Petrakaki, Dimitra & Hilberg, Eva & Waring, Justin, 2021. "The Cultivation of Digital Health Citizenship," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 270(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:270:y:2021:i:c:s0277953621000071
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113675
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621000071
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113675?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jannis Kallinikos & Niccolò Tempini, 2014. "Patient Data as Medical Facts: Social Media Practices as a Foundation for Medical Knowledge Creation," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 25(4), pages 817-833, December.
    2. Henwood, Flis & Harris, Roma & Spoel, Philippa, 2011. "Informing health? Negotiating the logics of choice and care in everyday practices of 'healthy living'," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(12), pages 2026-2032, June.
    3. Michael Barrett & Eivor Oborn & Wanda Orlikowski, 2016. "Creating Value in Online Communities: The Sociomaterial Configuring of Strategy, Platform, and Stakeholder Engagement," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 704-723, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mazanderani, Fadhila & Kirkpatrick, Susan F. & Ziebland, Sue & Locock, Louise & Powell, John, 2021. "Caring for care: Online feedback in the context of public healthcare services," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    2. Reilley, Jacob & Pflueger, Dane & Huber, Christian, 2024. "A typology of evaluative health platforms: Commercial interests and their implications for patient voice," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 350(C).
    3. Rubeis, Giovanni, 2023. "Liquid Health. Medicine in the age of surveillance capitalism," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 322(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lisha Ye & Huiqin Yang, 2020. "From Digital Divide to Social Inclusion: A Tale of Mobile Platform Empowerment in Rural Areas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-16, March.
    2. Kawaljeet Kaur Kapoor & Kuttimani Tamilmani & Nripendra P. Rana & Pushp Patil & Yogesh K. Dwivedi & Sridhar Nerur, 2018. "Advances in Social Media Research: Past, Present and Future," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 531-558, June.
    3. Petrakaki, Dimitra & Hilberg, Eva & Waring, Justin, 2018. "Between empowerment and self-discipline: Governing patients' conduct through technological self-care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 146-153.
    4. Liuan Wang & Lu (Lucy) Yan & Tongxin Zhou & Xitong Guo & Gregory R. Heim, 2020. "Understanding Physicians’ Online-Offline Behavior Dynamics: An Empirical Study," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 537-555, June.
    5. Letizia Lo Presti & Mario Testa & Vittoria Marino & Pierpaolo Singer, 2019. "Engagement in Healthcare Systems: Adopting Digital Tools for a Sustainable Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-15, January.
    6. Will, Catherine M. & Henwood, Flis & Weiner, Kate & Williams, Rosalind, 2020. "Negotiating the practical ethics of ‘self-tracking’ in intimate relationships: Looking for care in healthy living," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    7. Kempner, Joanna & Bailey, John, 2019. "Collective self-experimentation in patient-led research: How online health communities foster innovation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 238(C), pages 1-1.
    8. Alekh Gour & Shikha Aggarwal & Subodha Kumar, 2022. "Lending ears to unheard voices: An empirical analysis of user‐generated content on social media," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(6), pages 2457-2476, June.
    9. Alaimo, Cristina & Kallinikos, Jannis, 2022. "Organizations decentered: data objects, technology and knowledge," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112470, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Vestina Vainauskienė & Rimgailė Vaitkienė, 2022. "Foresight study on online health community: The perspective of knowledge empowerment for patients with chronic diseases," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 2354-2375, July.
    11. Hicks, Alison, 2022. "The missing link: Towards an integrated health and information literacy research agenda," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    12. Tian Zhang & Rong Zhang, 2024. "The spatial effect of low-carbon development of regional industries driven by the digital economy: evidence from Chinese cities," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-13, December.
    13. Christoph Riedl & Victor P. Seidel, 2018. "Learning from Mixed Signals in Online Innovation Communities," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(6), pages 1010-1032, December.
    14. Maha Shaikh & Emmanuelle Vaast, 2023. "Algorithmic Interactions in Open Source Work," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 744-765, June.
    15. Ghezzi, Antonio & Gastaldi, Luca & Lettieri, Emanuele & Martini, Antonella & Corso, Mariano, 2016. "A role for startups in unleashing the disruptive power of social media," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1152-1159.
    16. Iheanachor, Nkemdilim & Umukoro, Immanuel & Yela Aránega, Alba, 2023. "Ecosystem emergence in emerging markets: Evidence from the Nigerian digital financial services ecosystem," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    17. Marent, Benjamin & Henwood, Flis & Darking, Mary, 2018. "Ambivalence in digital health: Co-designing an mHealth platform for HIV care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 133-141.
    18. Amit K. Srivastava & Rajhans Mishra, 2023. "Analyzing Social Media Research: A Data Quality and Research Reproducibility Perspective," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 12(1), pages 39-49, January.
    19. Paul M. Gangi & Allen C. Johnston & James L. Worrell & Samuel C. Thompson, 0. "What could possibly go wrong? A multi-panel Delphi study of organizational social media risk," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-20.
    20. Yang, Hualong & Li, Dan, 2021. "Health management gamification: Understanding the effects of goal difficulty, achievement incentives, and social networks on performance," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:270:y:2021:i:c:s0277953621000071. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.