didziokaite-et-al-beyondQS.pdf (284.98 kB)
The mundane experience of everyday calorie trackers: Beyond the metaphor of Quantified Self
journal contribution
posted on 2017-03-14, 10:03 authored by Gabija Didziokaite, Paula SaukkoPaula Saukko, Christian GreiffenhagenIn this article, we build on the work of Ruckenstein and Pantzar (2015), who have demonstrated how our understanding of self-tracking has been influenced by the metaphor of the Quantified Self (QS). To complicate this very selective picture of self-tracking, we shift the focus in understanding self-tracking from members of the QS community to the experiences of ‘ordinary man and woman’ (Bakardjieva and Smith, 2001). We, therefore, interviewed ‘everyday calorie trackers’, people who had themselves started using MyFitnessPal calorie counting app but were not part of any tracking community. Our analysis identifies three main themes – goals, use and effect – which highlight the mundane side of self-tracking, where people pursuing everyday, limited goals engage in basic self-tracking and achieve temporary changes. These experiences contrast with the account of self-tracking in terms of long-term, experimental analysis of data on the self or ‘biohacking,’ which dominates the QS metaphor in the academic literature.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Published in
New Media and SocietyVolume
20Issue
4Pages
1470-1487Citation
DIDZIOKAITE, G., SAUKKO, P. and GREIFFENHAGEN, C., 2017. The mundane experience of everyday calorie trackers: Beyond the metaphor of Quantified Self. New Media and Society, 20 (4), pp.1470-1487.Publisher
© The Authors. Published by SAGE Publications (UK and US)Version
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2017-02-15Publication date
2017-03-24Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal New Media and Society and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817698478ISSN
1461-7315Publisher version
Language
- en