Digital mediation of candidacy in maternity care: Managing boundaries between physiology and pathology

2021
This paper brings together scholarship across sociology, media and communication, and human computer interaction to explore the intersection of digital health and the maternity care system. We draw on data (including interviews, focus groups, observations, and analyses of digital media content) from 19 studies involving over 400 women to explore women's experiences of using different forms of digital support such as the Internet, mobile technologies (apps and text messaging), social media, and remote monitoring devices in their reproductive journeys. We use a best fit approach to analysis, mapping our findings to the candidacy framework and notions of trajectory work to understand how women engage in digital health practices to negotiate boundaries between physiology and pathology and to enter dialogue with maternity services during conception, pregnancy and the postnatal period. We propose an integrated revised conceptual framework which explicates intersections between digital and care practices, and micro-level negotiations between women and professionals in the maternal health context. Our revised framework retains the dimensions of candidacy, but it introduces a precursor to the identification of candidacy in the form of 'understanding normality'. It identifies distinct forms of digital work (e.g. information work, navigation work, machine work) which operate across the candidacy dimensions that women (and partners at times) engage in to negotiate legitimacy when entering into encounters with the maternity care system. Operating conditions (norms around expert motherhood; neoliberal discourses around health optimisation, risk and responsibilisation) provide a broader macro-level context, influencing the micro-level dialogic processes between women and healthcare professionals. Our synthesis highlights digital mediation as a useful filter to understand care systems, distribution of lay/professional responsibilities, relational practices and the (dis)enablement of candidacy.
SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE
卷号:285
ISSN:0277-9536
收录类型
SSCI
发表日期
2021
学科领域
循证公共卫生
国家
英国
语种
英语
DOI
10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114299
其他关键词
INFORMATION-SEEKING; PRENATAL-DIAGNOSIS; SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS; INVISIBLE WORK; HELP-SEEKING; HEALTH-CARE; EXPERIENCES; RISK; INTERNET; CULTURES
EISSN
1873-5347
资助机构
University of Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies: Tiger Team scheme; European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Welsh Government [C82092]
资助信息
We would like to thank the reviewers for their detailed and helpful feedback. The narrative synthesis was supported by University of Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies: Tiger Team scheme. The last author would also like to acknowledge the Centre for Artificial Intelli-gence, Robotics and Human-Machine Systems (IROHMS) operation. C82092, part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Welsh Government.
被引频次(WOS)
0
被引更新日期
2022-01
来源机构
University of Leicester University of Leicester University of Leicester Cardiff University
关键词
Narrative review Digital health Maternity care Maternal health Uncertainty Risk Maternity Lay-professional