TY - JOUR
T1 - Quantifying the self with others
AU - Call, Shelbey R.
AU - Jensen, Jared T.
AU - Barbour, Joshua B.
N1 - The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-1750731.
PY - 2024/4/1
Y1 - 2024/4/1
N2 - Self-trackers collect personal data for many reasons, including generating insight about their bodies, habits, productivity, and wellbeing. Self-tracking may expose intimate facets of daily life, raising important questions about surveillance, privacy, and data ownership. In this study, we investigated an online community of self-trackers and their weekly “show-and-tell” presentations through observations of their meetings and interviews with members. Making sense of their personal data in community with others involved practical and philosophical difficulties that participants navigated by integrating competing priorities for their interactions in specific communication moves and by transcending interactional difficulties through a shared focus on an open science data imaginary. The findings contribute to the study of the datafication of health by revealing how their interactions helped them generate meaning, how they navigated the tensions inherent to making sense of personal data in community with others, and how they deliberated about the broader social issues implicated in their practice.
AB - Self-trackers collect personal data for many reasons, including generating insight about their bodies, habits, productivity, and wellbeing. Self-tracking may expose intimate facets of daily life, raising important questions about surveillance, privacy, and data ownership. In this study, we investigated an online community of self-trackers and their weekly “show-and-tell” presentations through observations of their meetings and interviews with members. Making sense of their personal data in community with others involved practical and philosophical difficulties that participants navigated by integrating competing priorities for their interactions in specific communication moves and by transcending interactional difficulties through a shared focus on an open science data imaginary. The findings contribute to the study of the datafication of health by revealing how their interactions helped them generate meaning, how they navigated the tensions inherent to making sense of personal data in community with others, and how they deliberated about the broader social issues implicated in their practice.
KW - Self-tracking
KW - analytics
KW - automation
KW - communication as design
KW - grounded practical theory
KW - quantified self
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U2 - 10.1177/20539517241247831
DO - 10.1177/20539517241247831
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85191294585
SN - 2053-9517
VL - 11
JO - Big Data and Society
JF - Big Data and Society
IS - 2
ER -