News

Data on the Run: Strava, Self-Tracking, and the Hazards of Oversharing

23 January 2025
samteague_murdoch

When:

Friday, February 21, 2025, 3.30 pm to 5.30 pm

Where:

City campus @ Odeon 333, 333 North Bridge Road, Level 2, Singapore 188721

Data on the Run:

Strava, Self-Tracking, and the Hazards of Oversharing

Research has shown that Strava, Zwift, and other fitness-promoting apps can improve physical and mental health outcomes, and in some instances, can foster a sense of community.

In this lecture, Dr Teague explores some of the darker aspects of this digital self-tracking culture, including how it changes the ontological experience of moving one’s body through exercise.

Drawing on six months of running activities and auto-ethnographic reflection, Dr Teague argues that numbers and data are ‘alive’, before, during and after we run or cycle, and are connected to our thoughts and feeling around our body and its movement across the land.

The once predominantly solo activity of running or cycling has been shifted into the space of social performance and transformed humans into good self-trackers and good consumers.

About the speaker:

Dr Sam Teague is a lecturer in Sociology @ Murdoch University. A passionate sociologist and tertiary educator, driven by an interest in all facets of the learning and teaching experience for staff and students. His current role as Lecturer and Academic Chair of Sociology in Murdoch University’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) involves lecturing in units exploring contemporary lifestyles, the history of mental illness, religion and society, the body, data surveillance, ethics, and health sociology. Dr Sam Teague’s research spans a number of areas relevant to the Social Sciences, but in particular, has focused on mental health stigma and the role of storytelling in breaking down or reinforcing it.