Abstract
Although over 100,000 health and medical mobile apps have been placed on the market, few critical social analyses have been yet undertaken of the role of these apps in healthcare, preventive health and health promotion. In this article I present an argument for approaching the study of mobile apps as sociocultural artefacts, focusing specifically on those that have been developed on health and medical topics. This perspective acknowledges that apps are digital objects that are the products of human decision-making, underpinned by tacit assumptions, norms and discourses already circulating in the social and cultural contexts in which they are generated, marketed and used. First, I provide the context, by discussing the gradual digitisation of health and medical information since the advent of the Internet and the emergence of health and medical apps as one of the latest developments. Second, I discuss how a critical perspective may be employed to analyse the social, cultural and political dimensions of health and medical apps. Finally I illustrate how such an approach may be applied by giving a case study of an analysis of the top 10 ranked health and medical apps on the Apple App Store on one day, outlining some major themes and discourses that emerge.
Highlights
Mobile software applications have become an important element of contemporary digital technology use
To provide a further example of how social researchers might approach the critical analysis of apps as sociocultural artefacts, I present some analysis of the first 10 health and medical apps that were listed in the charts of most popular apps as they were published on the Apple App Store on a day in September 2014
Apps that are directed at influencing health-related behaviours and encouraging patient self-care and voluntary promotion of one’s own health may be viewed as contributing to a neoliberal political orientation in which “healthism”, or the privileging of health above other priorities [64,65] and taking responsibility for one’s own health [8,9,66] are idealised
Summary
Mobile software applications (or “apps” as they are commonly known) have become an important element of contemporary digital technology use. 30 hours, and that the respondents used an average of 26 apps each [2] Despite this rapid expansion of a novel method of providing software programs to mobile device users, as yet very few critical social analyses of mobile apps have been published. The vast majority of research studies about this genre of apps have appeared in the medical or public health literature or market research reports. In so doing I introduce the concept of the app as sociocultural artefact This perspective acknowledges that apps are digital objects that are the products of human decision-making, underpinned by tacit assumptions, norms and discourses already circulating in the social and cultural contexts in which they are generated, marketed and used
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