ArticlePublic understanding of science (Bristol, England)2020
From self-tracking to self-expertise: The production of self-related knowledge by doing personal science.
Article in Public understanding of science (Bristol, England), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Epistemic agency in self-tracking: a conceptual literature review of quantified self as citizen science for health.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- "The more you learn, the more you can influence"-learning circles to support citizen science in Parkinson's disease: a pilot study in Sweden.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- The FHJ debate: Will artificial intelligence replace clinical decision making within our lifetimes?Future healthcare journal · 2024Article
- Co-designing a wiki-based community knowledge management system for personal science.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Face-to-face more important than digital communication for mental health during the pandemic.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Reimagining health services provision for neglected groups: The "personalization from below" phenomenon.Frontiers in sociology · 2023Article
- Donating Health Data to Research: Influential Characteristics of Individuals Engaging in Self-Tracking.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Effectiveness of Digital Forced-Choice Nudges for Voluntary Data Donation by Health Self-trackers in Germany: Web-Based Experiment.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Article
- Quantified Self as Epistemological Anarchism.Philosophia (Ramat-Gan, Israel) · 2022Article
- Whose Advice is Credible? Claiming Lay Expertise in a Covid-19 Online Community.Qualitative sociology · 2022Article
- Using an Individual-Centered Approach to Gain Insights From Wearable Data in the Quantified Flu Platform: Netnography Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Article
- Reconfiguring health knowledges? Contemporary modes of self-care as 'everyday fringe medicine'.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2020Article
- User types, psycho-social effects and societal trends related to the use of consumer health technologies.Digital healthReview
- A Long Way to Go: Patient Perspectives on Digital Health for Parkinson's Disease.Journal of Parkinson's diseaseReview
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This article explores the production and type of knowledge acquired in the course of specific digital self-tracking activities that resemble research and are common among followers of the Quantified Self movement. On the basis of interviews with self-trackers, it is shown that this knowledge can be characterised as a verified and practical self-knowledge, and that science in the form of scientific sources, methods and quality criteria plays a key role in its production. It is argued that this self-related knowledge can be conceptualised as self-expertise, and its production as personal science. The article then discusses the implications for the science-society relationship. In contrast to self-tracking data, so far self-knowledge has hardly caused any resonance in science, although science currently appears open to the insights from single subject (N-of-1) research. As a new mode of public engagement with science, personal science instead mainly leads to an individual self-expertisation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.