Digital Sociology Podcast

Digital Sociology•podcasters.spotify.com

Society & Culture

Interviews by Chris Till with researchers of all areas of digital culture and society.

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Episodes

Digital Health/Digital Capitalism Episode 8 Aristea Fotopolou

For this final episode in the series I spoke to Aristea Fotopolou about her work on gender, data and self-tracking. She told me about her work on fertility and pregnancy apps and how they construct and embody discourses of gender, capitalism and neoliberalism. We question the extent to which we are encouraged to be "good citizens". In my view Aristea has some very interesting and useful ways of conceptualising the ways in which we engage with health and exercise tracking such as "biopedagogy" an...

Apr 08, 2017•47 min

Digital Health/Digital Capitalism Episode 7 Btihaj Ajana

For this episode in the series I spoke to Btihaj Ajana who is a Senior Lecturer in Culture, Digital Humanities and Creative Industries at King’s College London and Associate Professor at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies. We talk about her work on biometrics and self-tracking. She suggests that when our bodies are transformed into data they are able to be distributed over networks and our bodily boundaries become more open and fuzzy. She sees this as a shift from body as flesh to body as data...

Mar 23, 2017•44 min

Digital Health/Digital Capitalism Episode 6 Liz McFall

In the sixth episode in the series I spoke to Liz McFall from the Open University. Liz discusses some of her work on the history of insurance and how this relates to the contemporary impact which digital data is having on insurance. New sources of data are changing how data is calculated although sometimes the changes are not as big as we might expect. We discuss whether self-tracking technologies will create personalised insurance pricing based on exercise activities and speculate on the forthc...

Mar 16, 2017•1 hr 5 min

Digital Health/Digital Capitalism Episode 5 Lynne Pettinger

For this podcast I spoke to Lynne Pettinger about the work she has done with Ewen Speed and Andrew Goffey on the use of data in the NHS and its impact on how services are managed and understood and the role it plays in privatisation. A key issue she addresses is the impact of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and how it signalled a shift in the role of the NHS. In particular there was a move from the role of the state being to "provider of care" to being a"promoter of care".

Mar 10, 2017•45 min

Digital Health/Digital Capitalism Episode 4 Will Davies

In episode 4 of the podcast I am talking to Will Davies, the author of The Happiness Industry and The Limits of Neoliberalism. Will tells me about his research into the history of economics and psychology and its influence on public policy. Why do governments and businesses want to make us happy? What's in it for them?

Mar 02, 2017•37 min

Digital Health/Digital Capitalism Episode 3 - Tamar Sharon

In episode 3 of the podcast I am speaking to Tamar Sharon about her work on self-tracking and the move of digital companies (such as Google, Facebook and Apple) into health research. Amongst other things we discuss the Apple HealthKit and Google's Baseline study and their implications for the political economy of health and how they are potentially skewing the direction of health research. We also think consider whether self-tracking should be seen as a manifestation of neoliberalism or as somet...

Feb 23, 2017•1 hr 11 min

Digital Health/Digital Capitalism Episode 2 Minna Ruckenstein

In the second episode of my Digital Health/Digital Capitalism podcast I spoke to Minna Ruckenstein about her work on various aspects of digital health and in particular how this is influenced by consumption. We discussed issues around "surveillance capitalism", "prosumption" in digital health technologies, direct to consumer genetic testing and the potential for self tracking devices to be used to establish social solidarity.

Feb 16, 2017•44 min

Digital Health/Digital Capitalism Episode 1 Nick Fox

This is the first podcast in the series and I am speaking to Nick Fox about his work on personal medical devices and his analysis of digital health and digital capitalism more generally. I think this discussion works pretty well as a broad introduction to the themes of the series as Nick really clearly lays out some useful ways of approaching these things. He also offers some suggestions of how things might develop in the future and some propositions for how we can challenge some of the more dam...

Feb 03, 2017•52 min

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