"Protection on that erection?": Discourses of accountability & compromising participation in digital sexual health

Wood, Matthew; Garbett, Andrew; Morrissey, Kellie; Hopkins, Peter; Balaam, Madeline

Abstract

This paper analyses sexual health workers' 'talk' around their introduction of a digital platform to enhance a regionally managed condom distribution scheme for young people. In examining the discursive resources workers used in framing the sexual health service, their service users and digital technology, we argue that problematic ideologies around young people and sexuality were exercised and reproduced. Workers positioned themselves as the gatekeepers of young people's sexual health, who were in turn constructed as 'mischievous' and 'misguided', with technology having a corruptive role over what was considered to be 'healthy' and 'normal' sexual relationships. We suggest our findings indicate severe challenges in developing community-commissioned platforms alongside service providers, and questions how plausible user participation can be in attempting to conduct collaborative, participatory and engaged work in this context.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• Start Date: Apr 21, 2018
• End Date: Apr 26, 2018
• Acceptance Date: Apr 21, 2018
• Publication Date: Apr 30, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 12, 2020
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Volume: 2018-April
• Pages: 1-12
• Book Title: CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• ISBN: 9781450356206
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174238
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/5667384