What happens when people turn their everyday experience into data: an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of self-tracking. People keep track. In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin kept charts of time spent and virtues lived up to. Today, people use technology to self-track: hours slept, steps taken, calories consumed, medications administered. Ninety million wearable sensors were shipped in 2014 to help us gather data about our lives. This book examines how people record, analyze, and reflect on this data, looking at the tools they use and the communities they become part of. Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus describe what happens when people turn their everyday experience—in particular, health and wellness-related experience—into data, and offer an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of using these technologies. They consider self-tracking as a social and cultural phenomenon, describing not only the use of data as a kind of mirror of the self but also how this enables people to connect to, and learn from, others. Neff and Nafus consider what's at stake: who wants our data and why; the practices of serious self-tracking enthusiasts; the design of commercial self-tracking technology; and how self-tracking can fill gaps in the healthcare system. Today, no one can lead an entirely untracked life. Neff and Nafus show us how to use data in a way that empowers and educates.

This book provides an empirical and philosophical investigation of self-tracking practices. In recent years, there has been an explosion of apps and devices that enable the data capturing and monitoring of everyday activities, behaviours and habits. Encouraged by movements such as the Quantified Self, a growing number of people are embracing this culture of quantification and tracking in the spirit of improving their health and wellbeing. The aim of this book is to enhance understanding of this fast-growing trend, bringing together scholars who are working at the forefront of the critical study of self-tracking practices. Each chapter provides a different conceptual lens through which one can examine these practices, while grounding the discussion in relevant empirical examples. From phenomenology to discourse analysis, from questions of identity, privacy and agency to issues of surveillance and tracking at the workplace, this edited collection takes on a wide, and yet focused, approach to the timely topic of self-tracking. It constitutes a useful companion for scholars, students and everyday users interested in the Quantified Self phenomenon.

Household Self-Tracking During a Global Health Crisis provides a comprehensive and straightforward account of deeper health narratives managed through data tracking within households formed during a global health crisis.

Self-tracking practices are part of many health and medical domains. The introduction of digital technologies such as smartphones, tablet computers, apps, social media platforms, dedicated patient support sites and wireless devices for medical monitoring has contributed to the expansion of opportunities for people to engage in self-tracking of their bodies and health and illness states. The contributors to this book cover a range of self-tracking techniques, contexts and geographical locations: fitness tracking using the wearable Fitbit device in the UK; English adolescent girls’ use of health and fitness apps; stress and recovery monitoring software and devices in a group of healthy Finns; self-monitoring by young Australian illicit drug users; an Italian diabetes self-care program using an app and web-based software; and ‘show-and-tell’ videos uploaded to the Quantified Self website about people’s experiences of self-tracking. Major themes running across the collection include the emphasis on self-responsibility and self-management on which self-tracking rationales and devices tend to rely; the biopedagogical function of self-tracking (teaching people about how to be both healthy and productive biocitizens); and the reproduction of social norms and moral meanings concerning health states and embodiment (good health can be achieved through self-tracking, while illness can be avoided or better managed). This book was originally published as a special issue of the Health Sociology Review.

The Politics and Possibilities of Self-Tracking Technology focuses on the dialectical relationship between users and designers of wearable technology to examine how datafication processes redefine the body, and explores what this means for the design, administration and study of self-tracking systems.

An engaging text that enables readers to understand the world through symbolic interactionism This lively and accessible book offers an introduction to sociological social psychology through the lens of symbolic interactionism. It provides students with an accessible understanding of this perspective to illuminate their worlds and deepen their knowledge of other people’s lives, as well as their own. Written by noted experts in the field, the book explores the core concepts of social psychology and examines a collection of captivating empirical studies. The book also highlights everyday life—putting the focus on the issues and concerns that are most relevant to the readers’ social context. The Social Self and Everyday Life bridges classical theories and contemporary ideas, joins abstract concepts with concrete examples, and integrates theory with empirical evidence. It covers a range of topics including the body, emotions, health and illness, the family, technology, and inequality. Best of all, it gets students involved in applying concepts in their daily lives. Demonstrates how to use students’ social worlds, experiences, and concerns to illustrate key interactionist concepts in a way that they can emulate Develops key concepts such as meaning, self, and identity throughout the text to further students’ understanding and ability to use them Introduces students to symbolic interactionism, a major theoretical and research tradition within sociology Helps to involve students in familiar experiences and issues and shows how a symbolic interactionist perspective illuminates them Combines the best features of authoritative summaries, clear definitions of key terms, with enticing empirical excerpts and attention to popular ideas Clear and inviting in its presentation, The Social Self and Everyday Life: Understanding the World Through Symbolic Interactionism is an excellent book for undergraduate students in sociology, social psychology, and social interaction.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21st IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society, I3E 2022, which took place Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, in September 2022. The 37 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Artificial intelligence; Data and Analytics; Careers and ICT; Digital Innovation and Transformation; Electronic Services; Health and Wellbeing; Pandemic; Privacy, Trust and Security.

Perspectives on the varied challenges posed by big data for health, science, law, commerce, and politics. Big data is ubiquitous but heterogeneous. Big data can be used to tally clicks and traffic on web pages, find patterns in stock trades, track consumer preferences, identify linguistic correlations in large corpuses of texts. This book examines big data not as an undifferentiated whole but contextually, investigating the varied challenges posed by big data for health, science, law, commerce, and politics. Taken together, the chapters reveal a complex set of problems, practices, and policies. The advent of big data methodologies has challenged the theory-driven approach to scientific knowledge in favor of a data-driven one. Social media platforms and self-tracking tools change the way we see ourselves and others. The collection of data by corporations and government threatens privacy while promoting transparency. Meanwhile, politicians, policy makers, and ethicists are ill-prepared to deal with big data's ramifications. The contributors look at big data's effect on individuals as it exerts social control through monitoring, mining, and manipulation; big data and society, examining both its empowering and its constraining effects; big data and science, considering issues of data governance, provenance, reuse, and trust; and big data and organizations, discussing data responsibility, “data harm,” and decision making. Contributors Ryan Abbott, Cristina Alaimo, Kent R. Anderson, Mark Andrejevic, Diane E. Bailey, Mike Bailey, Mark Burdon, Fred H. Cate, Jorge L. Contreras, Simon DeDeo, Hamid R. Ekbia, Allison Goodwell, Jannis Kallinikos, Inna Kouper, M. Lynne Markus, Michael Mattioli, Paul Ohm, Scott Peppet, Beth Plale, Jason Portenoy, Julie Rennecker, Katie Shilton, Dan Sholler, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Isuru Suriarachchi, Jevin D. West