Health promotion in the digital era: a critical commentary
Open accessAbstract
A range of digitized health promotion practices have emerged in the digital era. Some of these practices are voluntarily undertaken by people who are interested in improving their health and fitness, but many others are employed in the interests of organizations and agencies. This article provides a critical commentary on digitized health promotion. I begin with an overview of the types of digital technologies that are used for health promotion, and follow this with a discussion of the socio-political implications of such use. It is contended that many digitized health promotion strategies focus on individual responsibility for health and fail to recognize the social, cultural and political dimensions of digital technology use. The increasing blurring between voluntary health promotion practices, professional health promotion, government and corporate strategies requires acknowledgement, as does the increasing power wielded by digital media corporations over digital technologies and the data they generate. These issues provoke questions for health promotion as a practice and field of research that hitherto have been little addressed.
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H-IoT can create epistemic and social distance between patients and health professionals.
“H-IoT can create epistemic and social distance between patients and health professionals.”
From Ethics of the health-related internet of things: a narrative review (2017) · cites this paper as Lupton 2015
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- Authors
- Lupton, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Canberra (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Lupton, D.
- ORCID
- Lupton, D.
- Venue
- Health Promotion International
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2014-10-15
- Volume
- 30
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 174-183
- ISSN
- 0957-4824 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-2245
- OpenAlex
- W1978386788
- Cited by
- 346
- References
- 70
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 42 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 44 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 32 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 30 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 3.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Health Promotion International (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- University of Canberra Research Portal (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Public Health Policies and Education
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Keywords
- health promotion, digital technologies, digital health promotion, personal responsibility for health, socio-political implications, health data
- MeSH terms
- Health Promotion, Humans, Obesity, Health Behavior, Public Health Practice, Monitoring, Ambulatory, Internet, Biomedical Technology, Social Media
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