Reframing Public Health Problems: A Qualitative Examination of Public Health Apps in the United States

• In Event: 4122 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtables (60 min)
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 14. The Policy Context of Health

Abstract

Mobile phone applications (apps) for health are proliferating at a tremendous rate and public health agencies are now starting to offer their own apps as a tool for promoting public health information. This research critically examines the emerging use of mobile apps by public health agencies and aims to investigate the ways that public health apps form and frame public health problems. This study takes a governmentality perspective and uses a Foucauldian inspired policy analysis methodology (Bacchi 2009) to conduct a critical examination on two apps from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These apps constructed public health problems in ways that explicitly held some groups accountable, while implicitly absolving others. Certain technical affordances and marketing decisions might get built into technology such as apps in unexpected ways. The findings in this paper illustrate that the app design process raises important (and under-researched) questions about how apps may come to emphasize certain types of public health knowledges and politics. The discourses on these apps can be understood as a guide to healthy behaviour, instructing subjects how to become productive biocitizens. Findings highlight how apps can be understood as “mini-policies” where public health problems come to be refracted, reframed and reconfigured.

Author

• Carmen Lamothe, University of Toronto