Premium
Changing emotional engagement with running through communal self‐tracking: the implications of ‘teleoaffective shaping’ for public health
Author(s) -
Spotswood Fiona,
Shankar Avi,
Piwek Lukasz
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.13057
Subject(s) - tracking (education) , negotiation , psychology , loyalty , qualitative property , qualitative research , bittorrent tracker , activity tracker , social psychology , disengagement theory , public relations , applied psychology , sociology , physical activity , computer science , eye tracking , political science , marketing , business , medicine , social science , pedagogy , gerontology , machine learning , physical medicine and rehabilitation , computer vision
Emerging research explores the role of self‐tracking in supporting healthy behaviour. Self‐tracking comprises a number of interrelated practices; some individual some communal. In this article, we focus on practices that enable interaction between self‐trackers through data sharing and communication around personal data. For public health, communal self‐tracking has been explored for the additional benefits it provides in addition to self‐knowledge. However, under‐explored is the emotional entanglement of self‐tracking and tracked activities, or the role of practitioners in the dynamic evolution of tracked practices. Qualitative, mixed methods data were collected from leisure‐time runners in the SW England who self‐track using social fitness app ‘Strava’, and were interpreted through the lens of practice theory. We find that communal self‐tracking affords the active shaping of the emotion and purpose of running. This ‘teleoaffective shaping’ allows practitioners to negotiate and reconstitute appealing meanings associated with running to protect their practice loyalty. We identify three mechanisms for teleoaffective shaping afforded by Strava: labelling, reward and materialising effort. Findings advance our understanding of how social fitness apps work to retain practitioners of physically active leisure practices. Future research should further explore the multiple ways that associations with tracked physical activity evolve through entanglement with self‐tracking practices.