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A touching app voice thinking about ethics of persuasive technology through an analysis of mobile smoking-cessation apps

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Abstract

We study smoking-cessation apps in order to formulate a framework for ethical evaluation, analyzing apps as ‘medium’, ‘market’, and ‘genre’. We center on the value of user autonomy through truthfulness and self-understanding. Smoking-cessation apps usually communicate in an anonymous ‘app voice’, with little presence of professional or other identified voices. Because of the fast-and-frugal communication, truthfulness is problematic. Messages in the ‘quantification’ modules may be read as deceitfully accurate. The app voice frames smoking as a useless, damaging habit indicative of weakness of will, in a ‘cold-turkey’ frame of individual mind-over-body heroism. Thus apps contribute to a stigmatization of smokers and culpabilization of relapses. The potential to support user autonomy through diverse meaningful voices and personalized communication remains yet unused.

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Acknowledgments

This article has been supported by the research project “Sociological imagination and disciplinary orientation in applied social research” (http://igel.ro), taking place in The Research Center in Human Resources, Management and Marketing of the Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest, with the financial support of UEFISCDI with Grant No. PN-II-RU-TE-2011-3-0143, contract 14/28.10.2011.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Cosima Rughiniş & Ştefania Matei

  2. Department of Computer Science, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Răzvan Rughiniş

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  1. Cosima Rughiniş
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  2. Răzvan Rughiniş
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  3. Ştefania Matei
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Correspondence to Ştefania Matei.

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Rughiniş, C., Rughiniş, R. & Matei, Ş. A touching app voice thinking about ethics of persuasive technology through an analysis of mobile smoking-cessation apps. Ethics Inf Technol 17, 295–309 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-016-9385-1

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