COVID society – some resources I have put together for social researchers

 

 

Over the past fortnight, I’ve put together a few open-access resources concerning what an initial agenda for COVID-related social research could be and research methods for conducting fieldwork in the COVID world.

Links are below:

Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic (Google Doc crowd-sourced resource)

Social Research for a COVID and post-COVID World: An Initial Agenda (blog post)

Conducting Qualitative Fieldwork During COVID-19 (PowerPoint slides) (Webinar presentation with voice and slides)

 

Photo credit: Daniel Tafjord on Unsplash

 

My 2019 publications

Books

• Lupton, D. (2019) Data Selves: More-than-Human Perspectives. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Reports

Lupton, D. (2019) The Australian Woman and Digital Health Project: Comprehensive Report of Findings. Canberra: News & Media Research Centre.

Book chapters

• Lupton, D. (2019) Vitalities and visceralities: alternative body/food politics in digital media. In Phillipov, M. and Kirkwood, K. (eds), Alternative Food Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream. Routledge: London, pp. 151-168.
• Lupton, D. (2019) Digital sociology. In Germov, J. and Poole, M. (eds), Public Sociology: An Introduction to Australian Society, 4^th St Leonards: Allen & Unwin., pp. 475-492.

Journal articles

• Lupton, D. and Maslen, S. (2019) How women use digital technologies for health: qualitative interview and focus group study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 21(1), online, available at https://www.jmir.org/2019/1/e11481/
• Salmela, T., Valtonen, A. and Lupton, D. (2019) The affective circle of harassment and enchantment: reflections on the ŌURA ring as an intimate research device. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(3), 260-270.
• Lupton, D. (2019) The thing-power of the human-app health assemblage: thinking with vital materialism. Social Theory & Health, 17(2), 125-139.
• Lupton, D. (2019) Towards a more-than-human analysis of digital health: inspirations from feminist new materialism. Qualitative Health Research, 29(14), 1998-2009.
• Maslen, S. and Lupton, D. (2019) Enacting chronic illness with and through digital media: a feminist new materialist approach. Information, Communication and Society, online first. doi: 1080/1369118X.2019.1602665
• Lupton, D. and Leahy, D. (2019) Reimagining digital health education: the critical pedagogical and research possibilities of storyboarding. Health Educational Journal, 78(6), 633-646.
• Lupton, D. (2019) ‘It’s made me a lot more aware’: a new materialist analysis of health self-tracking. Media International Australia, 171(1), 66-79.
• Lupton, D. (2019) ‘I’d like to think you could trust the government, but I don’t really think we can’: Australian women’s attitudes to and experiences of My Health Record. Digital Health, 5, online, available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2055207619847017
• Lupton, D. (2019) Australian women’s use of health and fitness apps and wearable devices: a feminist new materialism analysis. Feminist Media Studies, online first. doi:10.1080/14680777.2019.1637916
• Fitzpatrick, K., Leahy, D., Webber, M., Gilbert, J., Lupton, D. and Aggleton, P. (2019) Critical health education studies: reflections on a new conference and this themed symposium. Health Education Journal, 78(6), 621-632.
• Maslen, S. and Lupton, D. (2019) ‘Keeping it real’: women’s enactments of lay health knowledges and expertise on Facebook. Sociology of Health & Illness, 41(8), 1637-1631.
• Lupton, D. (2019) Towards a more-than-human approach to neurotechnologies. American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience, 10(4), 174-176.
• Lupton, D. (2019) ‘The internet both reassures and terrifies’: exploring the more-than-human worlds of health information using the story completion method. Medical Humanities, online first. org/10.1136/medhum-2019-011700
• Lupton, D. (2019) ‘Things that matter’: poetic inquiry and more-than-human health literacy. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, online first. doi:1080/2159676X.2019.1690564
• Lupton, D. (2019) Data mattering and self-tracking: what can personal data do?Continuum, online first. doi:10.1080/10304312.2019.1691149

Vitalities Lab Newsletter Number 5

VITALITIES LAB NEWSLETTER

Number 5, 11 September 2019

The Vitalities Lab is led by SHARP Professor Deborah Lupton, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW Sydney. Team members are Dr Ashleigh Watson and Dr Clare Southerton. Further details here.

New publications

• Maslen, S. and Lupton, D. (2019) ‘Keeping it real’: women’s enactments of lay health knowledges and expertise on Facebook. Sociology of Health & Illness, online first. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12982
• Lupton, D. (2019) ‘The internet both reassures and terrifies’: exploring the more-than-human worlds of health information using the story completion method. Medical Humanities, online first. org/10.1136/medhum-2019-011700

Presentations/workshops

19 July: Ashleigh convened ‘Affect, Knowledge and Embodiment: A Critical Feminist Arts/Research Workshop’ at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, with Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro (Griffith) and Sam Trayhurn (WSU).  Information about the workshop and copies of the zine can be found here.

14 August: Deborah gave an invited seminar presentation on her digital health research for the School of Public Health & Community Medicine, UNSW Sydney.

14 August: Deborah gave an invited lecture and a workshop, both on using social theory in a thesis, for the Arts & Social Sciences HDR student conference, UNSW Sydney.

19 August: Deborah gave an invited presentation to the UNSW Sydney Pioneers alumni association about her research on digital health.

5 September: Clare gave a presentation on her chapter (co-authored with Miranda Bruce) about intimacies and the impersonal in ‘Black Mirror’, published in the edited volume Social Beings, Future Belongings (Routledge) at the book launch, ANU, Canberra. Her presentation and others at the launch can be viewed here.

 

9 September: Ashleigh ran a zine-making workshop at the Vitalities Lab on the theme of ‘algorithmic micropolitics’. A blog post about the workshop and the zine itself that was collaboratively made by participants can be found here.

10 September: Deborah gave an invited presentation at the ‘Bioethics Colloquium’, convened by UNSW and the South East Sydney Local Health District Clinical Ethics Service

Call for submissions: So Fi Zine

Ashleigh has launched the call for submissions for So Fi Zine edition #6 – So Fi Zine is a sociological fiction zine for arts-based research, creative sociology, and art inspired by social science. The zine publishes short stories, poetry, photography, photo essays, cartoons, and other creative works. Edition #6 will be published in November 2019 and is inspired by Deborah Lupton’s digital, creative, more-than-human and future oriented research. Pieces are invited that creatively explore sociological futures: bodies, spaces, disciplines and things. Submission info and previous edition of the zine can be found here.

 

 

Media appearances

• Deborah wrote an article for The Conversation on portrayals of heart disease in the popular media. She did follow-up interviews on ABC Sydney, Melbourne and Far South Coast radio
• Deborah’s research on people’s use of digital health was quoted in an ABC Life online article about health apps

Vitalities Lab Newsletter Number 4

 

VITALITIES LAB NEWSLETTER

Number 4, 2 August 2019

The Vitalities Lab is led by SHARP Professor Deborah Lupton, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW Sydney. Further details here.

New Lab members

In July, the Vitalities Lab welcomed two new postdoctoral fellows: Dr Ashleigh Watson (left) and Dr Clare Southerton.

Ashleigh will be working on a new ARC Discovery Project ‘Living with Personal Data: Australians’ Understandings and Practices’ with Deborah and Mike Michael, University of Exeter. This project now has its own website, which can be found here. It will be regularly updated with news about the project findings, the methods we are experimenting with and lists of readings we are engaging with.

New publications

• Lupton, D. (2019) Australian women’s use of health and fitness apps and wearable devices: a feminist new materialism analysis. Feminist Media Studies, online first. doi:10.1080/14680777.2019.1637916
• Fitzpatrick, K., Leahy, D., Webber, M., Gilbert, J., Lupton, D. and Aggleton, P. (2019) Critical health education studies: reflections on a new conference and this themed symposium. Health Education Journal, online first. org/10.1177/0017896919860882

New grant

Deborah is one of an international team of researchers who has been awarded a network support grant by the Swedish  Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, led by Martin Berg at Malmo University, Sweden. The network will convene activities related to the topic of ‘Re-humanising automated decision making’. Further details are here.

Presentations/workshops

Ashleigh ran a creative methods workshop on Affect, Knowledge and Embodiment at Griffith University, Brisbane, 19 July.  Details of the workshop and the zine created there can be viewed and downloaded here.

Ashleigh will be leading another zine making workshop at the Vitalities Lab on the topic of algorithmic identities in September. She will also be contributing to a TASA workshop on Creativity and Methodological Innovation in the Sociology of Familial and Intimate Relationships to be held 29 November: details are here.

Media appearances

Deborah was quoted in article in Bustle magazine on digital technology designed for women: https://www.bustle.com/p/is-the-rise-of-femtech-a-good-thing-for-women-heres-what-the-experts-think-17993009

Deborah did an interview for ABC Radio Gold Coast about her research on health and fitness apps and wearable devices (9 July)

Upcoming events

Deborah is an invited speaker at the TASA Health Day event on Data, Technology and Sociology in the Age of Digital Health: details are here

Kicking off the project

I’ve set up a new website for my project ‘Living with Personal Data’. I’ve reblogged this first post from this project here. The project can be followed by going to the Home page and scrolling down to provide your email to subscribe.

LIVING WITH PERSONAL DATA

The Living with Personal Data project has just kicked off. We have appointed a Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Ashleigh Watson, to begin working on the project. While we are waiting for our ethics approval, Ashleigh is updating our literature review. In conjunction with the Vitalities Lab led by Deborah Lupton, we are running several pop-up methods workshops in the next few months to experiment with the innovative methods we will be using in our fieldwork, which will include home visits with people living in Sydney, and hands-on workshops with diverse groups of Australians.

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Interview with me about my new book Data Selves

 

I did an interview recently with Rafael Grohmann about my new book Data Selves: More-than-Human Perspectives (out from Polity in October). He has now translated it into Portuguese and published it on his blog DigiLabour: available here.

Below are the original English questions and my written responses.

RG: What does data selves mean in a more-than-human perspective?

DL: A more-than-human perspective acknowledges that humans are always already part of nonhuman relations. Humans and nonhumans come together in assemblages that are constantly changing as humans move through their worlds. From this perspective, digital devices and software assemble with humans, and personal data are generated in and with these enactments. These data assemblages are more-than-human things. People live with and co-evolve with their personal data – they learn from data and data learn from them in a continually changing relationship.

RG: How can feminist materialism theory and the anthropology of material culture help us understand datafication?

DL: In previous work, I have suggested the digital devices can be considered to lively, as can digital data. Building on this approach, I use feminist new materialism and the anthropology of material culture to investigate these dimensions of datafication and dataveillance further. The feminist new materialism scholars I draw on in the Data Selves book are Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Jane Bennett and Karen Barad. These scholars share an interest in the affective forces, vitality and distributed nature of agencies as they are generated with and through more-than-human assemblages. Scholars in the anthropology of material culture such as Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam have also called attention to the lively agencies of humans and nonhumans when they gather together. They focus on how humans respond to, learn about and make sense of their worlds when engaging in embodied and sensory encounters with nonhumans. Ingold describes this as ‘being alive to the world’.

In developing my theoretical approach in Data Selves, I found these perspectives helpful in thinking through what Barad calls the ‘onto-ethico-epistemological’ dimensions of datafication and dataveillance. These perspectives have not yet been taken up to any great extent in thinking about datafication and dataveillance. This is the project I am pursuing. It allows for a non-normative ethical approach to datafication and dataveillance that acknowledges the constantly emergent and dynamic nature of lively data selves and the embodied, multisensory and affective dimensions of how humans live with and learn from their data.

RG: In your forthcoming book, do you talk about data selves and quantified self in world of work?

DL: I don’t discuss the workplace to any great extent in Data Selves. In in my previous book The Quantified Self there was quite a bit of discussion of self-tracking in the workplace. Data Selves differs from The Quantified Self in including a lot of discussion of my empirical research projects that I have conducted over the past few years – indeed, since writing The Quantified Self – which involves people discussing their self-tracking practices and their understandings and use of personal data. My research participants didn’t talk much about their data practices in the context of the workplace, apart from some references on the part of some people to using productivity tools. Those who were active self-trackers were predominantly tracking their body weight, fitness, food or calorie intake, sleep and finances.

RG: In the last year, many books on the same subject have been published, such as David Beer, Shoshana Zuboff, Taina Bucher, Tarleton Gillespie, José van Dijck and Thomas Poell. What is the difference of your book, in theoretical and conceptual terms?

DL: My book differs in several ways: 1) in using more-than-human theory to analyse datafication and dataveillance; 2) in discussing findings from my own empirical research into self-tracking and people’s understandings and practices related to their personal data; and 3) including a greater focus on the multisensory dimensions of data materialisations and sense-making, including how artists and critical designers have sought represent personal data or critique datafication and dataveillance in novel ways.

RG: After a few years since your book Digital Sociology, for you, what is the future research agenda of digital sociology?

DL: I have become increasingly interested in more-than-human theory since writing Digital Sociology and also in postqualitative research as well as innovative methods for social inquiry, including experimenting with design- and arts-based methods. Taking these perspectives and methods into new directions for me constitutes the future agenda of digital sociology.

Working with image cards in social research

As part of my experiments with innovative methods for social research and developing design sociology, I have been using a set of image cards developed by Dan Lockton and his team at the Imaginaries Lab for their New Metaphors workshops. Dan has kindly made these resources open access (see here). The cards consists of two types: 1) a range of diverse images of things, activities and experiences that exist in people’s everyday lives (natural phenomena like clouds, rain, trees or animals and things from built environments such as cracks in pavements, graffiti and the hum of a fridge); and 2) a range of topics, concepts or ideas (for example, safety, love, fame, half-remembered dreams and personal security). I printed out a set of the New Metaphors cards, and over the past two weeks have run two pop-up methods workshops at my Vitalities Lab to experiment with them.

The two groups who came along to the workshops (there were about 15 people at the first one and ten at the second workshop) participated in activities that I devised, and then provided feedback on how they found the activities and how they thought they could use the cards in their own research or teaching. The feedback from both workshop groups was very positive: members enjoyed working with these cards and thinking about how they could use them.

At the first workshop, I used a worksheet I downloaded from the Imaginaries Lab and a research activity worksheet that I had crafted myself. After the first workshop, I developed a new worksheet, and renamed the activity ‘Vital Images Method’ to better describe what I was wanting to do with it. The two worksheets I developed are provided  below. They can be downloaded at the links here as well: VITAL IMAGES METHOD – worksheet 1 VITAL IMAGES METHOD – worksheet 2

VITAL IMAGES METHOD: WORKSHEET 1

Image [title]:   _______________________________

Choose an image card. Describe what you think of, see, feel when you look at this image.

Topic [title]: ___________________________________________

Choose a topic card. Describe what you think of, see, feel when you consider this topic.

Circle words that are shared. What are the similarities and differences? What new or surprising connections do you see?

Worksheet 1

 

VITAL IMAGES METHOD: WORKSHEET 2

 People can work as individuals, in pairs or in small groups.

Identify a topic (e.g. big data, apps, data privacy, smartphones, fitness, exercise, good health, a specific health condition, a risk or threat) that you would like your research participants to focus on.

Ask your participants to sort through the image cards and pull out some (say three or four cards) that they associate with the topic (in present day or a specified period into the future [10 years, 20 years etc]). Ask them to reflect on these questions (they can write these reflects down or record them using a voice recording device):

1. What do these images mean to you in relation to the topic?
2. Why do you think you chose them?
3. What feelings/emotions do they inspire in relation to this topic?
4. Did these images provoke new connections or ideas for you?
5. Did you make any connections or ideas that surprised you?

Alternative approach: rather than ask participants to choose image cards, provide them with cards randomly, and ask them to undertake the same reflections.

Extensions

1. Make a drawing or map of the connections you see between the image and the topic.
2. Write a short story or make a story board based on the ideas generated by the images.

Worksheet 2

 

Analysis

The participants’ reflections can be used as research data – as a way of inquiring into the often unrecognised or unacknowledged memories, feelings and associations that people draw on to give meaning to their worlds.

Vitalities Lab Newsletter Number 2

VITALITIES LAB NEWSLETTER

Number 2, 29 April 2019

The Vitalities Lab is led by SHARP Professor Deborah Lupton, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW Sydney. Further details here.

New Publications

• Lupton, D. (2019) Towards a more-than-human analysis of digital health: inspirations from feminist new materialism. Qualitative Health Research, online first. doi.org/10.1177/1049732319833368
• Maslen, S. and Lupton, D. (2019) Enacting chronic illness with and through digital media: a feminist new materialist approach. Information, Communication and Society, online first. doi: 1080/1369118X.2019.1602665
• Lupton, D. and Leahy, D. (2019) Reimagining digital health education: the critical pedagogical and research possibilities of storyboarding. Health Educational Journal, doi:1177/0017896919841413
• Lupton, D. (2019) ‘It’s made me a lot more aware’: a new materialist analysis of health self-tracking. Media International Australia, doi:org/10.1177/1329878X19844042

 

Presentations

 

Deborah speaking at the CSRH seminar series

• Deborah Lupton: ‘The internet both reassures and terrifies’: using the story completion method for health research. Presentation for the Centre for Social Research in Health Seminar Series, 2 April 2019
• Deborah Lupton: ‘”Smart” health promotion: a perspective from digital sociology’. Invited presentation at a sub-plenary on smart health promotion, International Union for Health Promotion and Education World Conference, Rotorua, New Zealand, 10 April 2019
• Deborah Lupton: ‘The more-than-human worlds of self-tracking for health and fitness’. Keynote at the World Congress of the Sociology of Sport, Dunedin, New Zealand, 24 April 2019

The campus at the University of Dunedin, where Deborah gave a keynote

 

Upcoming events

• 6 May: Deborah will be holding a  Vitalities Lab in-house pop-up methods workshop using the ‘New Metaphors’ inspiration cards
• 7 May: Deborah is presenting a workshop on ‘Increasing your academic visibility’. Registration is free and open to all. Further details here.
• 13 May: Deborah is the convenor and one of the panel speakers at the UNSW Grand Challenges Event ‘Shaping our digital future’. Registration is free and open to all. Further details here.

Opportunities

• The Vitalities Lab has a doctoral research stipend worth $30,000 annually for four years for a domestic candidate who meets UNSW Sydney requirements for doctoral admission and wishes to pursue a project related to the Lab’s research directions. Contact Deborah Lupton (d.lupton@unsw.edu.au for further details).
• Research practicums are also available for international doctoral students who are pursuing their studies at a university outside Australia to spend a period of time as a visiting researcher at the Vitalities Lab under Deborah Lupton’s supervision. Tuition fees apply. Further details are available here.

 

Vitalities Lab Newsletter Number 1

The Vitalities Lab’s first newsletter is available here: VLab Newsletter 1.

Re/imagining Personal Data Workshop: Call for participants

 

AoIR Preconference Workshop: Re/imagining Personal Data

• Tuesday 1 October 2019, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
• 9.30 am-12.30 pm (followed by catered lunch)

Organisers: Deborah Lupton (UNSW Sydney), Larissa Hjorth (RMIT) and Annette Markham (Aarhus University)

Overview: This half-day workshop involves a selection of hands-on arts- and design-based activities to invite participants to re/imagine personal digital data. Participants will be able to experiment with innovative methods of eliciting creative and more-than-representational responses to personal data and generating speculative imaginaries about the futures of data. These methods can be used for teaching purposes or research projects.

We will be using these activities to explore and respond to these key questions:

• What do personal data do?
• How best can we use them?
• What is our relationship with our personal data?
• Which data do we want to keep and protect and which do we want to discard or forget?
• What are our affective and sensory engagements with these data?
• What are the futures of personal data?

Participants at all levels of research experience are invited to attend, including postgraduate students and people working outside the university sector.

Registration and lunch are free, but places are strictly limited.

Please contact Deborah Lupton, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney (d.lupton@unsw.edu.au ) as soon as possible with an email noting that you’d like to register to secure your place.

Please note that this workshop follows the Data Futures conference, 30 September 2019, also to be held at UNSW Sydney (details here), and precedes the Association of Internet Researchers Conference taking place in Brisbane (details here).

Photo credit: “I Love Data” She Wept. Bixtentro, Flickr. CC BY 2.0