Health In a Digital Society: Markets, Inequalities, Ethics, and Governance

Health is a vast field that has been transformed by information and communication technologies. This session aims to open space to discuss how ICTs are re-shapping what our societies comprehend as health and health authorities. Social network platforms have opened and/or amplified health markets in which a great variety of influencers dispute attention and authority to sell information, services, and products. This brings new challenges for public health. How to deal with the individualization processes connected to the use of ICTs? How to guarantee that public health prevails before rising market forces that dispute with it transforming people into costumers that act just as individuals? How social networks are redefining the historical disputes between clinical physicians, experiencial knowledges, and scientific perspectives on health? The session is open to empiral research on these and similar topics as well to proposals of new methodological tools and analytical frames to understand the digital phenomena related to health in a digital society.