The social meaning of steps: user reception of a mobile health intervention on physical activity

ABSTRACT In recent years, mobile health (mHealth) technologies have received increasing attention from industry and researchers. Such technologies have been the focus of both criticism and high expectations. In this paper, we analyze the integration of mHealth tools in everyday life. Insights into the actual use of such tools have empirical importance and could contribute to our theoretical understanding of mHealth technologies. Our research is based on 23 interviews with the participants of a smartphone-based mobile health intervention aimed at increasing physical activity. We followed the principles of grounded theory during data collection and our analysis is framed by the domestication approach. Our results reveal that the intervention design can result in the participants feeling ill-represented by the reductive nature of the data they generate. The results also reveal the inadequacy between biomedical standards and the social contexts of use. In addition, we describe how middle-class users perceive step-counting through the prism of a moralizing ethos of self-responsibility. Our research has practical implications for the developers and participants of mHealth interventions and theoretical implications regarding mHealth as a societal practice. We also suggest that mHealth-related public policies may fail to reach certain population groups, namely those who do not share the values that surround those technologies and their uses.

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