Knowledge production in mHealth
The field of mHealth includes a diverse range of technologies, mobile communication and wearable devices. How do these different technologies produce knowledge? To what extent is this knowledge accurate, reliable or relevant to users? This project is concerned with the epistemology of mHealth. It explores diverse modes of knowledge production specific to particular technologies and their effects on the data, predictions and user guidance generated by mHealth.
The technologies explored as part of this project include period and fertility tracking mobile applications. The investigators are concerned with interrogating normative assumptions about sex and embodiment, gender, sexuality and procreation, which are at play in these apps, shape their algorithms and impact the knowledge created by these technologies. The very conceptualisation of reproductive health is interrogated as well as the normative linking of periods and sexuality with procreation in applications concerned with women’s health.
Main investigators: Tereza Hendl and Bianca Jansky