News
Invited paper at UNIL, Lausanne: Records, self-monitoring and everyday data practices
13 June 2018
We were invited by Giada Dansesi, a Senior Researcher at the Université de Lausanne (UNIL), to give a seminar to the STSLab which is part of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at UNIL. The seminar was on Wednesday 6 June.
This is the first analysis drawing on our interviews with people who are engaged in self-monitoring either their blood pressure, or their body mass index (BMI)/ weight. It was great to have an opportunity and incentive to undertake the provisional analysis, and to have an interested audience to test our ideas on.
We also used the trip to learn more about the research into self-monitoring that is currently being untaken at UNIL. Giada kindly arranged a smaller meeting with her research group that took place after we delivered our paper.
Along with Giada, we met with Michele Grossen, Franco Panese, Bernard Burnand, Melody Pralong, Laetitia Della Bianca and Sébastien Miserez. In the meeting, they told us about their interesting research – the main project they talked about with us focuses on diabetes self-management for children. PhD students associated with the team are also doing very interesting research on the embodied experience of diabetes, and on period and fertility tracking apps.
Kate and Catherine will be presenting the paper again on 27 July at EASST in Lancaster, where they will again draw on data from our interviews with device users. The paper will build on discussions in Lausanne.
Abstract
Records, self-monitoring and everyday data practices
In this presentation, we discuss everyday practices of self-monitoring focussing particularly on record keeping, charting and visualising. We draw on a study focussed on two cases: blood pressure monitoring and BMI/weight monitoring. Looking across the range and combinations of digital and paper records people create and keep, we ask what is being made visible and to whom?
We are interested in the meaning of records made as well as those misplaced, forgotten or discarded, and readings not taken or recorded. We are also interested in practices of sharing in different ways.
In our research we find people who keep no records, or make records but do not review them, and instances where people do not record unwanted or disappointing readings. We note also the continued role of paper charts and records even for those who track digitally. In thinking about what is made visible through everyday tracking practices we extend the notion of ‘filtration work’ (Nielsen, 2015) to include not only what data is shared with others, but also which data is committed to record at all.
Further, in trying to understand instances where numbers are unremarkable, not recorded or reviewed, we pursue the idea that monitoring may provide information to be consumed rather than data to be tracked (Knorr Cetina, 2010). In elaborating what is and is not made visible in the local settings of health monitoring, we offer insights into what might remain inaccessible to clinicians and to companies in the digital economy.