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

Abstract

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.

Data anxieties: Finding trust in everyday digital mess

“…There is a growing academic interest in anxieties about data security, surveillance and power (e.g. Barassi, 2017;Dencik et al, 2017) and in how people use and experience self-tracking technologies (Lupton, 2016;Fors, 2017a, 2017b;Ruckenstein, 2016). This literature provides insights into how personal data is created, and used by individuals and organisations.…”

Datafied childhoods: Contextualising datafication in everyday life

“…Similarly, Lyon (2017: 830) differentiates responsive and initiatory surveillance practices, whereby the former refers to 'activities that relate to being surveilled', while the latter consist of 'modes of engagement with surveillance'. However, irrespective of the degree of agency enabled and encouraged in specific practices of dataveillance -that is, whether practices of dataveillance are voluntary, social and participatory (Lupton, 2015) -we agree with Barassi (2017) that under the logic of datafication every form of digital participation is, at least partially, 'coerced'. In other words, while the physical environment is refashioned through internet-connected things that register, create and distribute data (Bunz and Meikle, 2018), the digital environment is also designed so as to encourage users to share, more or less voluntarily, their personal data.…”

“…As we have seen, children's social media presence and digital participation are decided by their parents well before they are in a position to contribute to such decisions (Barassi, 2017;Leaver, 2017). One of the first practices of intimate surveillance, as noted above, consists of the sharing of ultrasound images on social media.…”

Investigation of Digital Technology Use in the Transition to Parenting: Qualitative Study (Preprint)

“…With the rapid proliferation and uptake of digital technologies, it is crucial to understand which technologies are used by parents to make decisions impacting their health and that of their families and how their use contributes to the transition to parenting in both virtual and material spaces and at their intersections [11][12][13]. Recent information suggests that pregnant women and mothers of young children value information gathered from digital sources [14], with Facebook and other social media being commonly cited resources for new and transitioning mothers [15,16].…”