http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8257 2013-05-22T20:02:57Z 2013-05-22T20:02:57Z Lupton, Deborah http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9063 2013-05-05T16:52:35Z 2013-05-04T00:00:00Z

Title: The Commodification of Patient Opinion: the Digital Patient Experience Economy in the Age of Big Data Authors: Lupton, Deborah Abstract: As part of the digital health phenomenon, a plethora of interactive digital platforms have been established in recent years to elicit lay people’s experiences of illness and healthcare. The function of these platforms, as expressed on the main pages of their websites, is to provide the tools and forums whereby patients and caregivers, and in some cases medical practitioners, can share their experiences with others, benefit from the support and knowledge of other contributors and contribute to large aggregated data archives as part of developing better medical treatments and services and conducting medical research. However what may not always be readily apparent to the users of these platforms are the growing commercial uses by many of the platforms’ owners of the archives of the data they contribute. This article examines this phenomenon of what I term ‘the digital patient experience economy’. In so doing I discuss such aspects as prosumption, the phenomena of big data and metric assemblages, the discourse and ethic of sharing and the commercialisation of affective labour via such platforms. I argue that via these online platforms patients’ opinions and experiences may be expressed in more diverse and accessible forums than ever before, but simultaneously they have become exploited in novel ways.

2013-05-04T00:00:00Z Lupton, Deborah http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8363 2012-05-18T18:52:26Z 2012-05-18T00:00:00Z

Title: Configuring maternal, preborn and infant embodiment Authors: Lupton, Deborah Abstract: A growing literature on the biopolitics of contemporary maternity and on risk society, individualisation and parenting has demonstrated the increasing emphasis that has been placed upon pregnant women and mothers to take responsibility for the health and welfare of their children. The ideal female ‘reproductive citizen’ is expected to place her children’s health and wellbeing above her own needs and desires. Here the subject positions of the ‘good mother’ and the ‘responsible citizen’ as they are produced through the discourses and practices of neoliberalism intertwine. This paper looks at the convergence of various influential discourses, images, practices and technologies in configuring maternal, preborn and infant bodies in certain ways in the context of neoliberalism. These include such factors as the growing importance of the concept of risk in relation to preborn and infant wellbeing, the extension of infant identity back into preborn bodies, the emergence of the concepts of the foetal and embryonic (and even the preconceived embryonic) citizen, the precious child and intensive parenting and the symbolic concepts of permeability, purity and danger and Self and Other as they relate to maternal, infant and preborn embodiment.

2012-05-18T00:00:00Z Lupton, Deborah http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8351 2012-05-15T16:52:35Z 2012-05-15T00:00:00Z

Title: 'I'm Always on the Lookout for What Could be Going Wrong': Mothers' Concepts and Experiences of Health and Illness in Their Young Children Authors: Lupton, Deborah Abstract: Mothers in contemporary western societies are expected to adhere to the principles of intensive parenting, spending a great deal of time and effort caring for their children, protecting them from risks and promoting their health, development and wellbeing. This paper draws upon research involving indepth interviews with 60 mothers of infants and young children living in Sydney. The discussion focuses in detail on three major topics discussed in the interviews: how the interviewees conceptualised good health and illness in their children; the role of diet and physical exercise in promoting children’s good health; and space, physical safety and bad influences. The study found that the interviewees reported that they ‘read the signs’ of their children’s bodies and had to ‘know’ their bodies intimately in order to do so. They also interpreted the signals of their own bodies – their ‘gut instincts’ – as part of the process of maintaining careful surveillance of their children’s health state. They represented diet and physical exercise as the most important dimensions of promoting their children’s health, and were very concerned about the risk of obesity in their children. Notions of space and judgements about the bodies within these spaces were also important to some of the women’s concepts of protecting their children’s health and wellbeing.

2012-05-15T00:00:00Z