What kind of a problem is loneliness? Representations of connectedness and participation from a study of telepresence technologies in the UK.

Loneliness is represented in UK policy as a public health problem with consequences in terms of individual suffering, population burden and service use. However, loneliness is historically and culturally produced; manifestations of loneliness and social isolation also require social and cultural analysis. We explored meanings of loneliness and social isolation in the UK 2020-2022 and considered what the solutions of telepresence technologies reveal about the problems they are used to address. Through qualitative methods we traced the introduction and use of two telepresence technologies and representations of these, and other technologies, in policy and UK media. Our dataset comprises interviews, fieldnotes, policy documents, grey literature and newspaper articles. We found loneliness was represented as a problem of individual human connection and of collective participation in social life, with technology understood as having the potential to enhance and inhibit connections and participation. Technologically-mediated connections were frequently perceived as inferior to in-person contact, particularly in light of the enforced social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that addressing loneliness requires attending to other, related, health and social problems and introducing technological solutions requires integration into the complex social and organisational dynamics that shape technology adoption. We conclude that loneliness is primarily understood as a painful lack of co-presence, no longer regarded as simply a subjective experience, but as a social and policy problem demanding resolution.

Protocol for 'virtual presence': a qualitative study of the cultural dialectic between loneliness and technology.

INTRODUCTION: Most research on loneliness comes from the health sciences, statistically seeking to measure the health-related effects of feeling alone or isolated. There is a need to expand on this understanding and explore loneliness as a more complex social phenomenon. In this article, we present a qualitative design for studying the intersection between loneliness, technology and culture. Conceptualising this as the cultural dialectic between loneliness and technology, we aim to unpack the reciprocal ways by which understandings of loneliness shape technology, while technologies also affect society's understandings of loneliness. In elucidating this dialectic, we aim to develop new knowledge and a novel theoretical framework for understanding loneliness and its technological solutions, which, in turn, can enable better solutions to contemporary problems of loneliness. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We will adopt a qualitative approach that combines interviews, participant observation and textual analysis to explore loneliness and its technological solutions from the perspectives of policy-makers, producers, professionals and users in Norway and the UK. The data will be analysed through an analytical framework combining insights from discourse theory and philosophical debates on presence, which will allow us to capture and rethink fundamental assumptions about loneliness and technology. Outcomes will be revised understandings of loneliness, relevant to researchers, entrepreneurs, policy-makers, clinicians, educators and the broader public. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The project has been evaluated and approved by the data protection officer at Oslo Metropolitan University and by the Norwegian Social Science Data Services. Additional ethical approval for data collection in the UK has been provided by the University of Oxford Interdivisional Research Ethics Committee. Informed consent will be obtained from all participants. Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, international conference presentations and lay media.

Legitimating the illegitimate: How doctors manage their knowledge of the prestige of diseases.

Although the sociology of medicine has developed a rich body of research on patients' experiences and how they handle their illnesses, few analyses have examined doctors' concepts of disease. Building on previous research findings that doctors consider some diseases to be more worthy than others, this article focuses on how these differences in disease prestige are articulated and made logical. We presented a focus group panel of doctors a table of 38 diseases rank-ordered by prestige according to the results of a previous quantitative study of doctors. We prompted a lively discussion among the doctors by asking them whether they were familiar with this rank order. In analysing how they managed the prestige knowledge presented to them, we focused on how they handled the value conflict between this informal rank order and the formal value of equality of treatment. Using positioning theory as a theoretical premise and a methodological tool, we found that the focus group participants created positions in their conversations that allowed them to present and discuss views on disease prestige that would be considered illegitimate if they were declared directly. However, they were able to do so without being forced to take a personal stand. Thus, we demonstrate how informal disease rankings can be produced and reproduced.