From online social networks to codesign in digital health
I set this blog up just over four years ago in January 2012 both to record my online ethnographic PhD research and with the hope of having conversations that would help inform my thinking and enable me to share my learning along the way. After four years of working full time, compressing five days into four and doing research on the extra day I’d squeezed out of the week, I finally had my viva on Friday. I passed the assessors’ grilling with four minor corrections and am basking in a profound sense of relief and delight in equal measure. My research was about online social networks and mental health with a heavy focus on the now departed The World of Mentalists blog and ecosystem around it. I have many people to be grateful to for in helping me think about this topic over the last four years. In particular I’d like to thank all my interviewees for sharing their time and expertise (you know who you are) and to everyone who welcomed me into the madosphere. I’d also like to thank Phil, Mark, Sue, James and Kat for many a Skype, phone call, meet up and often conference podium where we shared our thinking about mental health and online social networks with various audiences. During those four years my interests have developed beyond online social networks to digital technologies in health, with a particular focus on co-design and ethics. I’ve clocked up 133 posts on this blog and recently changed its title to reflect those broader interests. A few years ago I set up mHabitat which comprises an ever...
We do not communicate well with our younger generations #TheProfileProject #10
@FakeThom tells the story behind his Twitter profile picture: “My profile picture is a cartoon graphic representation of me to primarily accompany my YouTube channel, matching the channel’s artwork and house style. It was created by a friend William Leeks and kindly donated to my channel to help get it off the ground. The image depicts me in a white coat with a yellow stethoscope and blue hair, representing my real-life job as a children’s doctor in Scotland. Although I do not wear a white coat day-to-day, it helps add to the identity in the cartoon version of myself. “As a children’s doctor, I’m concerned we do not communicate well with our younger generations, who are light years ahead of us with how they access and consume information online. My vlog channel aims to deliver health education to the YouTube generation in an entertaining and informative way, with teenagers being the target audience. Currently my videos look mainly at mental health, but also include topics such as sleep. Future videos will expand into sex education and other health-related content that commonly affects adolescents. “A side project of the channel also uses Minecraft to deliver information to a younger audience. My profile picture will sometimes change to a blocky Minecraft version to promote this side of my output. The cartoon version of me you see in the profile picture will occasionally have changes in hair colour if I have recently dyed my hair, or will have a background colour change to hold interest. The bold and outlined nature of the Saved By The Bell-style drawing is eye-catching at thumbnail size so works well...
Is digital technology a technical or adaptive problem in health?
Around three years ago I was invited to speak at a consultant psychiatrists committee meeting about social media and digital technology. I was mid way through my PhD and steeped in online ethnographic research about how people accessing mental health services and practitioners were making use of social networks. I had an inkling that I would have a mixed audience and I knew that not everyone would share my (then*) enthusiasm. As such I spent time preparing a range of compelling examples of digital technologies and social media practices, determined as I was to win over any detractors. I arrived a little early and so listened in to the tail end of an exasperated discussion about the various grinding limitations, obstacles and shortcomings of the in-house electronic patient record (EPR). If my audience’s primary experience of technology in health was such a bad one, then this did not bode well for my presentation – I quickly realised I was going to have to recalibrate. How could I be so naive as to think a conversation about the future potential of digital technologies would be welcomed, when the basics of reliable and effective electronic patient records seemed like a pipe dream? This experience came back to me whilst reading The Digital Doctor – Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age (Wachter, 2015) which is dominated by an expansive analysis of the shortcomings of contemporary electronic patient records. Wachter argues that EPRs have brought many a physician ‘to their knees’ with their clunky, confusing and complex systems (73). It is salutary to note that three years on...
My small act of Facebook solidarity #TheProfileProject #8
Alaric tells the story behind his most recent Facebook profile picture: “I have changed my profile picture many times since I came late to Facebook – a curios skeptic determined not to take it too seriously. I generally use self portraits, and when Facebook urges users to add rainbows or French flag filters to their profiles, I either ignored or signaled my approval of the cause in more personal ways. The most recent such occasion was the Bataclan shootings in Paris. “My response to this event was partly intellectual, mostly personal. I spent a lot of time in Paris in the 1980s, I still have good friends there and I am a Francophile. More than that, I see Paris as one of the great achievements of post enlightenment Western culture. For all its many faults like the ring of deprived suburbs, the civilized urbanity of Parisienne life is rightly held to be a template of how life can be lived well. That the IS terrorists chose to attack a concert hall and restaurants just made my feeling more visceral; I have worked in many Paris venues as a sound engineer, I have eaten in Paris restaurants and promenaded along her streets in the evenings. “I understand the west’s culpability in fermenting the crisis in the middle east; from France and Britain drawing lines on maps at Versailles, partitioning liberated Arab lands for their own gain, via the shambles of the British Palestine protectorate, French colonization of Syria, the fawning in front of Saudi oil wealth to the illegal invasion of Iraq… and much more. After the attack the Internet...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
