Digitised Health, Medicine and Risk

This book brings together contributions from social scientists who take critical approaches to digital health. The chapters focus on the ways in which risks are identified, publicised and managed across a range of technologies, including websites, online discussion forums, blogs, apps and biosensing devices. This book was originally published as a special issue of Health, Risk and Society.

Deborah Lupton is Centenary Research Professor in the News & Media Research Centre, Faculty of Arts & Design, University of Canberra, Australia. Her research spans sociology and media and cultural studies. She is the author/co-author of 15 books and three edited volumes.

Introduction: Digitised health, medicine and risk Deborah Lupton Risk in the design and development of apps 2. The gamification of risk: how health apps foster self-confidence and why this is not enough 3. Threats and thrills: pregnancy apps, risk and consumption 4. Asthma on the move: how mobile apps remediate risk for disease management 5. Digital 'solutions' to unhealthy lifestyle 'problems': the construction of social and personal risks in the development of eCoaches Individual users and the construction of risk 6. Digitalised health, risk and motherhood: politics of infant feeding in post-colonial Hong Kong 7. 'Holy shit, didn't realise my drinking was high risk': an analysis of the way risk is enacted through an online alcohol and drug screening intervention 8. Stem cell miracles or Russian roulette?: patients' use of digital media to campaign for access to clinically unproven treatments Citizens' understanding of the impact of digital technology on risk 9. Biosensing: how citizens' views illuminate emerging health and social risks