Cheapos and Aunties: Status Threats in the Age of Government-Led Self-tracking Campaigns

Abstract

Critical social analyses on digital health technologies and related gamification techniques have pointed to how the lives of users have become datafied and atomized as these technologies surveil, exploit or inform them. However, the ways people engage with these technologies in large-scale public health settings is less understood. We should not assume that key dynamics – like questions of surveillance, health and social status – work in state programs the same way they work in the private programs studied in previous research. As governments around the world adopt these technologies, it is crucial that we understand how people engage with digital health technologies when their data flows to their government. Using Singapore’s National Steps Challenge as a case study, I examine the stories participants narrate to rationalize their participation in the program in 24 semi-structured interviews. My study reveals that fitness trackers are not just sources of health information on the body, but also signifiers of status and social position; when distributed by the government, these digital health technologies can classify participants in undesirable ways. I unpack the various rhetorical claims and practices program participants engage in to manage these classed status threats according to their social position. This study shows that when governmentality works through objects of consumption, matters of distinction become a matter of public health policy.