Rethinking social action through the info-ecological dimensions of two collaborative public health platforms: the people's health movement and the citizen sense project platforms as examples of health-net-activism.

Abstract

Introduction: The analysis of online platforms is usually restricted to their communicative properties, similar to analyzing digital infrastructures that facilitate interactions among users. However, the definition is missing a broader interpretation rather than tools or communicative channels. To review this instrumental vision, scholars in a variety of fields have begun to analyze platforms from a multidisciplinary perspective as technical, economic, and sociocultural ecosystems that characterize the structure of contemporary society.

Methods: In this article, we adopt an info-ecological approach to the processes of platformization through a qualitative analysis of two platforms dedicated to health and quality of life. The infoecological approach suggests a new living condition that promotes the emerging computational ecologies composed of a web of people, data, algorithms, biodiversity, information, cities, viruses, and so forth, supporting a more-than-human common experience.

Results and discussion: The purpose is to examine how the heterogeneity of platform ecosystems (human and non-human) have been generating a cultural shift. That is to say, a-more-than-human interconnected and trans-organic network of networks that in our perspective also represent what we have called a new type of health-net-activism and digital citizenship.