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This chapter begins with an outline of the key theoretical perspectives offered by feminist materialist scholars and the contributions they can make to examine the micro- and macro-politics of body/food cultures in digital media. It examines digital media portrayals of different types of food, human bodies, and related concepts of fitness and health, vegetarianism and veganism, meat consumption, fat activism and pro-anorexia. Digital media representations of human bodies, or of food production and consumption practices, can be interpreted as political insofar as they privilege some meanings over others, and claim membership or speak to some social groups rather than others. The chapter identifies the agential capacities that are generated with and through artefacts such as hashtags, selfies, GIFs and memes, as well as their use of affective forces to convey and animate meaning as part of digital assemblages of bodies/food.

Objectives: While digital health technologies hold potential for improving healthcare and the generation and dissemination of health information, there are many issues to be resolved in facilitating their provision and efficacy and ensuring ethical management of personal health data. In the face of high-stakes digital health initiatives, debates and controversies, eliciting the views and experiences of the diverse constituents in the digital health ecosystem is important. Methods: A digital health stakeholder workshop was held in Canberra, Australia, to address two key questions: 1) What is currently working and not working in digital health? and 2) Where should digital health go in the future? As part of a living lab approach, the 25 workshop participants from research, industry, patient and other healthcare consumer groups and government, engaged in participatory design activities directed at stimulating ideas and discussion. The design artefacts and videos generated during the workshop were thematically analysed. Results: Digital health technologies offer valuable ways for healthcare consumers, providers, community groups and health industries to create and share information about health, medicine and healthcare. However, members of some social groups are currently excluded from full participation in the digital health ecosystem. Mechanisms for facilitating further consultation between the various stakeholders involved in digital health, including patients and carers, need to be established. The rights and responsibilities of the different stakeholders involved in connected digital health also need to be better identified and highlighted. At the same time, personal data privacy and security need protection. Conclusion: Establishing the effective and responsible delivery of digital health technologies and collection, protection and sharing of health data is highly complex. Infrastructure, ethical and social issues need to be considered.

Facebook is the most used social media platform globally, despite frequent and highly publicised criticism of some of its practices. In this article, we bring together perspectives from vital materialism scholarship – and particularly Jane Bennett's concept of 'thing-power' – with our empirical research on Australian Facebook users to identify what they find important and valuable about the platform. Findings are presented in the form of seven case studies of Facebook use, identifying lively affective forces, relational connections and agential capacities that drive people to continue to use Facebook, moderate their use or take a break. We argue that this theoretical perspective allows for a nuanced understanding of the distributed and relational agencies generated with and through Facebook assemblages that motivate people to stay on this social media platform.

This is the final version of the article. Available from Surveillance Studies Network via the URL in this record. ; Post-Snowden, several highly-publicised events and scandals have drawn attention to the use of people's personal data by other actors and agencies, both legally and illicitly. In this article, we report the findings of a project in which we used cultural probes to generate discussion about personal digital dataveillance. Our findings suggest the prevailing dominance of tacit assumptions about the uses and benefits of dataveillance as well as fears and anxieties about its possible misuse. They were able to identify a range of ways in which dataveillance is conducted, but were more aware of obvious commercial and some government actors. There was very little identification of the types of dataveillance that are used by national security and policing agencies or of illegal access by hackers and cybercriminals. We found that the participants recognised the value of both personal data and the big aggregated data sets that their own data may be part of, particularly for their own convenience. However, they expressed concern or suspicion about how these data may be used by others, often founded on a lack of knowledge about what happens to their data. The major question for our participants was where the line should be drawn. When does personal dataveillance become too intrusive, scary or creepy? What are its drawbacks and risks? Our findings suggest that experimenting with innovative approaches to elicit practices and understandings of personal digital data offers further possibilities for greater depth and breadth of social research with all types of social groups. ; This research was funded by personal research funds provided by the University of Canberra to Deborah Lupton.