233044 SE Digital Health Governance (2022S)

Internet platforms, apps, artificial intelligence (AI), and social media not only help to distribute political content, but their technical infrastructures, algorithms, and business models are political in their own right. This particularly applies to the health context, where digital data, knowledge, and services may become a matter of life and death, as we have seen just recently with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. But how are digital technologies developed, used, and governed in different social, cultural, and political contexts? The seminar Digital Health Governance aims at answering this question by focusing on the context of health, medicine, and the body. The following questions will be addressed: How do global technology companies enter local health contexts by providing health information, fitness apps, and online genetic testing? How are these digital tools used and what does the increasing “commodification” and “datafication” of health imply? How can patients get empowered by using online health information and what challenges arise in terms of surveillance and “fake news”? What rules and regulations are needed to govern digital health technologies, moderate medical online content, and work towards more open and just digital technologies? And how can we compare Digital Health Governance in global, European, and local contexts and analyze their relation to cultural values and political regimes?

To answer these questions, students will learn how to critically engage with literature on Digital Health Governance and how to relate it to particular case studies. Starting from students’ own experiences with digital health technologies, we will discuss digital practices, health-related data, and privacy aspects preparing the ground for the exploration of Digital Health Governance from different angles. Each unit will be composed of a brief introduction into the topic by the lecturer, discussions based on compulsory literature, and an empirical case study presented by student groups (based on suggested readings and a particular “case study”). This study can serve as groundwork for the term paper, in which each student will individually develop a concept for a small empirical project by combining the seminar literature with a small-scale “study” - e.g. analysis of a health website, platform, or COVID-19 dashboard, interview with users, discourse analysis of a small media, policy, or social media sample discussing health-related controversies etc. The main aim of the seminar is to collectively learn how to combine theoretical concepts with empirical research, how to give and get feed-back on students’ projects, and how to outline a small empirical study embedded in the seminar literature. Ongoing discussions of written assignments and oral presentations will help students to write their term papers. Teaching and readings are in English and students must be able to write and present their assignments in English.