Self-Quantification of Body and Health – An Explorative Study of Epistemological Relations to Data Among Self-Tracking Individuals

by | Jul 2, 2018 | Research Publications

Author(s):

  • Hagen, Niclas
  • Kasperowski, Dick

Abstract:

The current development of mobile digital technologies creates increasing possibilities forcreating big data and to quantify the self. But what are individual’s relations to these data on theself? In trying to tentatively answer this question, this article explores self-quantification byanalysing epistemological relations to body and health data among members of the QuantifiedSelf (QS) movement. The empirical material consists of videos of presentations by members ofthe QS where they present their ambitions to quantify themselves to their larger QS-community.The concept of mechanical objectivity (Daston and Galison, 2007) is applied to capture thedifferent relations to data that emerge out of these accounts on the use of mobile digitaltechnologies for self-quantifications of the individual body through data. Four categories of howindividual presenters describe their acquisition of, and how they relate to data emerge in theanalysis: the collector, the self-experimentalist, the toolmaker and the empowered.

Document:

https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/br3en

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