Mobile Telephones and Mobile Health: a Societal Question Under Debate in the Public Domain
Brigitte Juanals · 2018
This chapter begins by presenting the specific characteristics of the hybrid field of mobile health and the social science approaches taken in studying it. It then discusses the theoretical framework that joins the analysis of artifacts and innovative forms of sociotechnical mediation to the socioeconomic strategies of actors. Next, the chapter details the strategies and socioeconomic models of the industrial actors active in the field of mobile telephony in correlation with the consequences of the changes observed in modes of access to information, particularly in the field of mobile health. It further examines the way in which new forms of publication and communication, centered on new modes of production, presentation, organization and distribution/circulation of information or knowledge, affect the production of and mobile access to content in detail. These access systems are the result of interrelations between technical innovations, socioeconomic models and modes of regulation still in development.