An Australian survey of women's use of pregnancy and parenting apps

Lupton, Deborah; Pedersen, Sarah

doi:10.1016/j.wombi.2016.01.008

Cited by 215 publications

(215 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

194

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…These included critical content analyses of reproduction and pregnancy apps and self-monitoring devices [31][32][33][34], an online survey competed in late 2014 by 410 women around Australia who were either pregnant or had given birth in the previous three years [35] and a focus group study involving Sydney women fitting the same description, which took place in mid-2015 [36]. The research questions around which both the survey and focus groups were framed were: How are women using digital media for both pregnancy and parenting?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It Just Gives Me a Bit of Peace of Mind’: Australian Women’s Use of Digital Media for Pregnancy and Early Motherhood

Lupton

2017

Societies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A diverse range of digital devices and software are available to women to seek and share information and personal experiences about pregnancy and parenting. This article reports findings from a focus group study involving Australian women who were pregnant or had very young children. The participants were asked to recount their experiences of using digital media for pregnancy and parenting and what media they would like to see developed that were not yet available. The findings revealed that digital media were very important to the participants. They were using mobile apps, social media, content-sharing platforms and online discussion forums to connect with each other and with family members, post images and other information about their pregnancy and children, track their pregnancy or their children's behaviours and development, and learn about pregnancy, infants and childcare. Despite their frequent use of and reliance on digital media, few participants had begun to consider the implications of sharing personal information about themselves or their children online or by using apps to record details. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the complexities of the intersections between information, emotional support, intimacy, personal data generation, sharing and privacy as they are conducted and experienced on the digital media used by women during these life stages.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It Just Gives Me a Bit of Peace of Mind’: Australian Women’s Use of Digital Media for Pregnancy and Early Motherhood

Lupton

2017

Societies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…On the other hand, current understandings of mobile apps need to be related to an emerging body of literature that explores the relationship between self-tracking practices, surveillance, and flows of personal identifying information (Crawford, Lingel, & Karppi, 2015;Dijck, 2014;Lupton, 2012Lupton, , 2013bLupton, , 2014aLupton, , 2016Morozov, 2013). In fact, as Lupton (2016) has rightly shown, it is impossible to look at mobile apps without unraveling the complex relationship between digital practices of self-monitoring and the political economy of big data.…”

Section: The App Economy Data Mining and Pregnancy Appsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Barassi

2017

Social Media + Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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 2 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 users’ 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 users’ interaction with these technologies is critical and culturally specific. By discussing pregnancy apps as complex ethnographic environments—which are shaped by different cultural tensions and open-ended processes of negotiation, interaction, and normativity—the article will argue that—in the study of infancy online—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.

show abstract

“…A 2013 Australian study found that 40% of 35 participants had used at least one smartphone app to access pregnancy information [13]. In 2015, a larger Australian survey study of 410 women reported the proportion of pregnancy app users as 73%, the vast majority (92%) finding them to be useful [8,14]. The most valued feature was providing useful information (83%), mainly about fetal development (89%) or pregnancy-related changes in their bodies (71%) [8].…”

Section: The General Populationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When considering pregnancy apps, interactive features include: regular notifications, videos and data storage capability e.g. for photos, taking notes, pregnancy tracking, and "personalised tools to assess nutrition, fitness and weight" [14,20]. Women also value pregnancy apps and digital platforms "that are multifunctional and interact with each other" [6].…”

Section: The General Populationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Rise of Pregnancy Apps and the Implications for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Women: Narrative Review (Preprint)

Hughson¹,

Daly²,

Woodward‐Kron³

et al. 2017

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

An Australian survey of women's use of pregnancy and parenting apps

Cited by 215 publications

References 21 publications

‘It Just Gives Me a Bit of Peace of Mind’: Australian Women’s Use of Digital Media for Pregnancy and Early Motherhood

‘It Just Gives Me a Bit of Peace of Mind’: Australian Women’s Use of Digital Media for Pregnancy and Early Motherhood

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

The Rise of Pregnancy Apps and the Implications for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Women: Narrative Review (Preprint)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About