BabyVeillance? Expecting Parents, Online Surveillance and the Cultural Specificity of Pregnancy Apps:

摘要

The rapid proliferation of self-tracking pregnancy apps raises critical questions about the commodification and surveillance of personal data in family life while highlighting key transformations in the social experience of pregnancy. In the last 2a??years, we have seen the emergence of significant research in the field. On one hand, scholars have highlighted the political economic dimension of these apps by showing how they relate to new practices of quantification of the self. On the other hand, they have focused on usersa?? experience and on the affective, pleasurable, and socially meaningful dimension of these technologies. Although insightful, current research has yet to consider the cultural specificity of these technologies. Drawing on a digital ethnography of the 10 most reviewed pregnancy apps among UK and US users at the beginning of 2016, the article will show not only that the information ecologies of pregnancy apps are extremely varied but also that usersa?? interaction with these technologies is critical and culturally specific. By discussing pregnancy apps as complex ethnographic environmentsa??which are shaped by different cultural tensions and open-ended processes of negotiation, interaction, and normativitya??the article will argue thata??in the study of infancy onlinea??we need to develop a media anthropological approach and shed light on the cultural complexity of digital technologies while taking into account how users negotiate with digital surveillance and the quantification of the self.