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- Kapeller, Alexandra, 1992-
(författare)
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Towards feminist health empowerment for self-testing apps : testing for dementia
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Health empowerment, the idea to enable people to assume more control over their health decisions, has been a buzzword in health care organisation and has recently received even more attention through the popularisation of mobile health (mHealth) apps. One form of mHealth are self-testing apps, which offer users to test themselves for medical conditions as severe as dementia and Parkinson’s disease. Providing users with the possibility to take such a test independent of healthcare professionals has been advertised as empowering. Yet, it is not clear how the information supplied by self-testing apps empowers their users exactly. This problem alludes to the conceptual ambiguity around the term empowerment, which can raise false expectations. In this dissertation, I use a combination of theoretical analysis and qualitative methods to critically investigate self-testing apps in relation to current health empowerment narratives. For that, I use the example of CogniCheck, a self-testing app for changes in cognition indicative of mild neurocognitive disorder or dementia. Theory in philosophy of technology and feminist science and technology studies explains how CogniCheck mediates empowerment narratives, cultural images of dementia, and medical imperatives to test early. I investigate these mediations in their relation to empowerment from the starting point of a feminist conceptualisation of subjectivity and show how its key dimensions, i.e. relationality, embodiment, affect and intersectionality, structure the experience of the self-test and the kind of empowerment it affords. Building on these insights on subjectivity and technology, I suggest a feminist, phenomenological take on health empowerment in the context of self-testing apps.
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| 2. |
- Lucivero, Federica, et al.
(författare)
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Normative positions towards COVID-19 contact-tracing apps : findings from a large-scale qualitative study in nine European countries
- 2022
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Ingår i: Critical Public Health. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0958-1596 .- 1469-3682. ; 32:1, s. 5-18
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mobile applications for digital contact tracing have been developed and introduced around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Proposed as a tool to support ‘traditional’ forms of contact-tracing carried out to monitor contagion, these apps have triggered an intense debate with respect to their legal and ethical permissibility, social desirability and general feasibility. Based on a large-scale study including qualitative data from 349 interviews conducted in nine European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, German-speaking Switzerland, the United Kingdom), this paper shows that the binary framing often found in surveys and polls, which contrasts privacy concerns with the usefulness of these interventions for public health, does not capture the depth, breadth, and nuances of people’s positions towards COVID-19 contact-tracing apps. The paper provides a detailed account of how people arrive at certain normative positions by analysing the argumentative patterns, tropes and (moral) repertoires underpinning people’s perspectives on digital contact-tracing. Specifically, we identified a spectrum comprising five normative positions towards the use of COVID-19 contact-tracing apps: opposition, scepticism of feasibility, pondered deliberation, resignation, and support. We describe these stances and analyse the diversity of assumptions and values that underlie the normative orientations of our interviewees. We conclude by arguing that policy attempts to develop and implement these and other digital responses to the pandemic should move beyond the reiteration of binary framings, and instead cater to the variety of values, concerns and expectations that citizens voice in discussions about these types of public health interventions.
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| 3. |
- Widdicks, Kelly, et al.
(författare)
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Systems thinking and efficiency under emissions constraints: Addressing rebound effects in digital innovation and policy
- 2023
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Ingår i: Patterns. - : Elsevier BV. - 2666-3899. ; 4:2
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Innovations and efficiencies in digital technology have lately been depicted as paramount in the green transition to enable the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, both in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector and the wider economy. This, however, fails to adequately account for rebound effects that can offset emission savings and, in the worst case, increase emissions. In this perspective, we draw on a transdisciplinary workshop with 19 experts from carbon accounting, digital sustainability research, ethics, sociology, public policy, and sustainable business to expose the challenges of addressing rebound effects in digital innovation processes and associated policy. We utilize a responsible innovation approach to uncover potential ways forward for incorporating rebound effects in these domains, concluding that addressing ICT-related rebound effects ultimately requires a shift from an ICT efficiency-centered perspective to a “systems thinking” model, which aims to understand efficiency as one solution among others that requires constraints on emissions for ICT environmental savings to be realized.
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