Symbolic annihilation through design: Pregnancy loss in pregnancy-related mobile apps

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-631
Author(s):  
Nazanin Andalibi
Keyword(s):  
Pregnancy Loss ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Feature Analysis ◽  
Common Complication ◽  
Symbolic Annihilation ◽  
Significant Life ◽  
Information Tracking ◽  
Do So

Pregnancy is a significant life event for many. Using mobile apps to manage pregnancies is common. Pregnancy loss is a common complication associated with stigma that impacts one’s wellbeing, relationships, sense of self, and more. While pregnancy loss is important to many experiencing it, it is unclear to what extent pregnancy-related mobile apps account for it and consider associated users’ needs in their designs. We conducted a feature analysis of 166 pregnancy-related apps. We found that their main features focus on information, tracking, reminders, and social contact, and that 72% of these apps do not account for loss, 18% explicitly account for it, and 10% passively do so. We theorize this lack of consideration as symbolic annihilation through design. We argue that such annihilation is partly shaped by intensified mothering ideologies, further stigmatizes pregnancy loss, and perpetuates a normative, linear portrait of the pregnancy experience which is harmful and marginalizing.

LGBTQ Persons’ Use of Online Spaces to Navigate Conception, Pregnancy, and Pregnancy Loss: An Intersectional Approach

2022 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Nazanin Andalibi ◽  
Ashley Lacombe-Duncan ◽  
Lee Roosevelt ◽  
Kylie Wojciechowski ◽  
Cameron Giniel
Keyword(s):  
Pregnancy Loss ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Informational Needs ◽  
Emotional Needs ◽  
Perceived Need ◽  
Symbolic Annihilation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
Collective Resilience

Navigating conception, pregnancy, and loss is challenging for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people, who experience stigma due to LGBTQ identity, other identities (e.g., loss), and intersections thereof. We conducted interviews with 17 LGBTQ people with recent pregnancy loss experiences. Taking LGBTQ identity and loss as a starting point, we used an intracategorical intersectional lens to uncover the benefits and challenges of LGBTQ-specific and non-LGBTQ-specific pregnancy and loss-related online spaces. Participants used LGBTQ-specific online spaces to enact individual, interpersonal, and collective resilience. However, those with multiple marginalized identities (e.g., people of color and non-partnered individuals), faced barriers in finding support within LGBTQ-specific spaces compared to those holding privileged identities (e.g., White and married). Non-LGBTQ spaces were beneficial for some informational needs, but not community and emotional needs due to pervasive heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and a perceived need to educate. We conceptualize experiences of exclusion as symbolic annihilation and intersectional invisibility, and discuss clinical implications and design directions.

Music and Movement

2018 ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Jay Schulkin
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Aesthetic Sense ◽  
Sense Of Time ◽  
The Brain

Music and movement go together in every human society: “music to my feet,” as it were. The human condition, particularly human emotional expression, is linked to music. Indeed, movement and a sense of time are intimately connected, and the brain is prepared to detect movement, both familiar and unfamiliar. Our sense of self is tied to movement. Aesthetic sense is a feature of the way we come prepared to interpret the world. Such aesthetics are historically variable and rich when the ecological conditions are suitable. Aesthetic judgment reflects our cognitive flexibility, and our extension and use of specific cognitive mechanisms to widen domains of human expression. Music evolved in the context of social contact and meaning. Music continues to allow us to reach out to others and expand our human experience toward and with others. This process began with sounds and expanded into song and instrumental music.

“I’m Not Really 100% a Woman If I Can’t Have a Kid”: Infertility and the Intersection of Gender, Identity, and the Body

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 629-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann V. Bell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

Despite establishing the gendered construction of infertility, most research on the subject has not examined how individuals with such reproductive difficulty negotiate their own sense of gender. I explore this gap through 58 interviews with women who are medically infertile and involuntarily childless. In studying how women achieve their gender, I reveal the importance of the body to such construction. For the participants, there is not just a motherhood mandate in the United States, but a fertility mandate—women are not just supposed to mother, they are supposed to procreate. Given this understanding, participants maintain their gender by denying their infertile status. They do so through reliance on essentialist notions, using their bodies as a means of constructing a gendered sense of self. Using the tenets of transgender theory, this study not only informs our understanding of infertility, but also our broader understanding of the relationship between gender, identity, and the body, exposing how individuals negotiate their gender through physical as well as institutional and social constraints.

scholarly journals Impact of COVID-19 on ‘living well’ with mild-to-moderate dementia in the community: findings from the IDEAL cohort

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Clare ◽  
Anthony Martyr ◽  
Laura D. Gamble ◽  
Claire Louise Pentecost ◽  
Rachel Collins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
Living Well ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
Moderate Dementia ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Ideal

BackgroundNegative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with dementia have been widely-documented, but most studies have relied on carer reports and few have compared responses to information collected before the pandemic.ObjectiveWe aimed to explore the impact of the pandemic on community-dwelling individuals with mild-to-moderate dementia and compare responses with pre-pandemic data.MethodsDuring the second wave of the pandemic we conducted structured telephone interviews with 173 people with dementia and 242 carers acting as informants, all of whom had previously participated in the IDEAL cohort. Where possible we benchmarked responses against pre-pandemic data.ResultsSignificant perceived negative impacts were identified in cognitive and functional skills and ability to engage in self-care and manage everyday activities, along with increased levels of loneliness and discontinuity in sense of self and a decline in perceived capability to ‘live well’. Compared to pre-pandemic data there were lower levels of pain, depression and anxiety, higher levels of optimism, and better satisfaction with family support. There was little impact on physical health, mood, social connections and relationships, or perceptions of neighbourhood characteristics.ConclusionEfforts to mitigate negative impacts of pandemic-related restrictions and restore quality of life could focus on reablement to address the effects on participation in everyday activities, creating opportunities for social contact to reduce loneliness, and personalised planning to reconnect people with their pre-COVID selves. Such efforts may build on the resilience demonstrated by people with dementia and carers in coping with the pandemic.

scholarly journals Implications of COVID-19 on the Loneliness of Older Adults in Residential Care Homes

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973232110509
Author(s):  
Ken H. M. Ho ◽  
Agnes K. P. Mak ◽  
Rosenna W. M. Chung ◽  
Doris Y. L. Leung ◽  
Vico C. L. Chiang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Residential Care ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Care Homes ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Centered Care ◽  
Familiar World

With little understandings on the loneliness of older adults in residential care homes structured by social contact restrictions, the provision of person-centered care was jeopardized during the pandemic. This study employed hermeneutic phenomenology to explore the lived experiences of loneliness of this population during a 5-month period of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted unstructured face-to-face interviews with 15 older adults living in seven residential care homes. Thematic analysis was guided by Van Manen’s approach. The essence of loneliness was uncovered as “A deprived sense of self-significance in a familiar world contributes to older adult’s disconnection with prior commitments.” A sub-theme “From collapse to dissolution of self-understanding” revealed how COVID-19 structured their loneliness. Another sub-theme, “Restoring meanings by establishing connections with entities” illustrated the ways to mitigate loneliness during the pandemic. Activities fostering alternative self-interpretation are important to protect older adults against loneliness.

The Moral Significance of Recovery

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Ethical Imperative ◽  
Psychotherapeutic Relationship ◽  
Everyday Life Activities ◽  
Do So

Given the loss of a sense of self long-associated with psychosis, this chapter argues that preserving and helping to reconstruct the person’s sense of personhood becomes a primary objective, and ethical imperative, of the psychotherapeutic relationship. Not to do so serves to perpetuate both the negative effects of the illness and its stigmatized status in society, adding to, rather than counteracting, the damage that is already being done to the person by this combination of factors. Drawing inspiration from Desmond Tutu’s use of the African concept of Ubuntu, this chapter argues that psychotherapy for psychosis should embody an appreciation of how persons only become persons through other people. Based on first-person accounts and qualitative research on recovery, it then describes ways in which the person’s sense of self can be restored and reconstructed through small steps in everyday life activities and with the loving support of others, including psychotherapists.

The technological performance of populism

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 376-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Baldwin-Philippi
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Campaign Strategies ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Technological Performance ◽  
The People ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Do So

This article investigates the Trump campaign’s strategic use of digital platforms and their affordances and norms that contribute to a technological performance of populism. To do so, I build on theories of populism as a performance, rather than a set of identifiable qualities, and make a theoretical intervention calling for the need to add a material and technological focus to how scholars approach the concept in our contemporary media environment. This article presents a model for understanding populist affordances as those that center “the people” to various degrees, and applies that model in a case study of how campaigns in the 2016 US presidential race engaged in a technological performance of populism across a variety of platforms, including email, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and campaign-created mobile apps. Central to this analysis are campaign strategies of controlled interactivity, amateurism, participatory/user-generated content, and data-driven campaigning.

scholarly journals DESIGN FOR POSITIVE BREAST SELF-EXAM EXPERIENCE USING MOBILE APPS

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1013-1022
Author(s):  
Aylin Karadeniz Küçük ◽  
Bahar Şener
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Screening Methods ◽  
Common Cancer ◽  
Phase Study ◽  
Three Phase ◽  
Cancer Types ◽  
Self Examination ◽  
Do So ◽  
Current Behavior

AbstractBreast cancer is one of the most common cancer types among women, accountable for approximately 2.2 million new cases and 684,996 deaths globally in 2020. There are various screening methods to detect cancer early, and experts suggest that women should perform breast self-examination (BSE) once a month. Unfortunately, most women fail to do so even if they are aware of the risks and the importance of screening methods. The aim of this paper is to understand women's current behavior and experience with BSE and mobile BSE apps and to suggest several design dimensions for positive mobile BSE app experience by benefiting from positive technology. With this aim, three selected mobile BSE apps were used by a total of 24 participants for four weeks. A three-phase study was carried out to uncover women’s pre- during-, and post-usage experiences of BSE apps. The analysis revealed six headings under two themes: strategies, limitations, and emotions under BSE theme; and the needs, limitations, and benefits under Mobile Apps theme. Consequently, based on the findings, suggestions for design dimensions for BSE apps to better meet women’s needs by benefiting from levels of positive technology are made.

scholarly journals Rainbow of hope after the storm: Couples’ experiences of pregnancy after stillbirth

2015 ◽  
pp. 128-130
Author(s):  
Margaret M. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Maternity Care ◽  
Pregnancy Loss ◽  
Common Complication ◽  
The Past ◽  
High Resource ◽  
Poor Nutrition ◽  
Pregnancy And Birth

Despite phenomenal advances in maternity care over the past fifty years babies still die around the time of their birth and the causes may be varied. Pregnancy loss remains the most common complication of pregnancy today with one in five pregnancies ending in loss. These losses can occur at any stage from fertilisation through pregnancy to birth. Stillbirth is when the baby, greater than 24 weeks gestation or weighing more than 500 grams, is born having never shown signs of life. Most of the estimated 2,000,000 stillbirths annually, happen in low and middle resource countries, and occur for a combination of reasons: lack of access to trained healthcare assistance around pregnancy and birth, poor nutrition, and a dearth of resources — to name but a few. Stillbirth remains an issue for high resource countries like Ireland also. In high resource countries, it is expected that one in two hundred pregnancies ...

scholarly journals Impact of COVID-19 on ‘living well’ with mild-to-moderate dementia in the community: findings from the IDEAL cohort

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Clare ◽  
Anthony Martyr ◽  
Laura D Gamble ◽  
Claire Pentecost ◽  
Rachel Collins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
Living Well ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
Moderate Dementia ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Background Negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with dementia have been widely-documented, but most studies have relied on carer reports and few have compared responses to information collected before the pandemic. Objective We aimed to explore the impact of the pandemic on community-dwelling individuals with mild-to-moderate dementia and compare responses with pre-pandemic data. Methods During the second wave of the pandemic we conducted structured telephone interviews with 173 people with dementia and 242 carers acting as informants, all of whom had previously participated in the IDEAL cohort. Where possible we benchmarked responses against pre-pandemic data. Results Significant perceived negative impacts were identified in cognitive and functional skills and ability to engage in self-care and manage everyday activities, along with increased levels of loneliness and discontinuity in sense of self and a decline in perceived capability to ‘live well’. Compared to pre-pandemic data there were lower levels of pain, depression and anxiety, higher levels of optimism, and better satisfaction with family support. There was little impact on physical health, mood, social connections and relationships, or perceptions of neighbourhood characteristics. Conclusion Efforts to mitigate negative impacts of pandemic-related restrictions and restore quality of life could focus on reablement to address the effects on participation in everyday activities, creating opportunities for social contact to reduce loneliness, and personalised planning to reconnect people with their pre-COVID selves. Such efforts may build on the resilience demonstrated by people with dementia and carers in coping with the pandemic.

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