Tracking oneself for others: communal and self-motivational value of sharing exercise data online

Abstract

ABSTRACT Self-tracking is increasingly popular in recreational sport. Leisure sports practitioners use wearable devices that are connected to online platforms to record, analyse, and share their exercise data. While doing that they interact with a digital system, with themselves, and with peers. This paper examines social-communicative aspects of self-tracking, and the support that these aspects and their associated practices may provide for physical activity behaviour. Data for the study was collected using an online survey and in-depth interviews with Finnish trail runners. The results indicate that sharing exercise data with others on a regular basis can support physical activity behaviour because it is mediated by social peer support. The analysis identified information sharing, comparison, and recognition as the main social-communicative aspects that motivate sharing physical activity data online, and ordinariness and privacy as reasons that limit data sharing. This paper contributes to the discussion on digital leisure by showing that for many users, communal and self-motivational values of self-tracking practices surpass the concern of surveillance and commodification of leisure time.