For episode 6 of the Digital Sociology Podcast I spoke to the world renowned sociologist Deborah Lupton. Deborah has been a leading figure in the sociology of health, public health, the body and risk as well as many other areas. More recently she has been a pioneer of digital sociology. Here we talk a bit about her biography and how she came to be researching “the digital” and how her early work on the virality of HIV paved the way for thinking about digital networks. We also discuss self-tracking of health and exercise and how this relates to metaphors of flows. Deborah tells me about how some of her work on risk has fed into her understanding of big data and health and how she believes there is a new kind of individualisation in public health discourse influenced by the use of self-tracking.

For more of Deborah’s insights on the Quantified Self and self-tracking see her book on that topic, she also has a recent book on digital sociology and new one on digital health. For even more see the full list of her books.

You can read more about Deborah’s work on her blog This Sociological Life and you can follow her on Twitter @DALupton

 

https://soundcloud.com/digitalsociology/digital-sociology-podcast-episode-6-deborah-lupton

 

iTunes:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/digital-sociology-podcast/id1202207046?mt=2