On the Visuality of Mood Tracking Apps: Emotional Self-Quantification and Ideals of Affective Subjectivity Subjektfiguren der Gefühlsvermessung: zur Bildlichkeit von Mood-Tracking-Apps
Meister M, Pritz S, Przyborski A, Slunecko T (2025)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2025
Journal
Book Volume: 26
Article Number: 9
Journal Issue: 2
Abstract
We reconstruct both implicitly and visually conveyed knowledge within the visual presentation of two popular mood-tracking applications: Daylio (for private use) and Wellspace (for workplace contexts). Employing a comparative-diachronic research design, we analyze these apps in relation to each other and in terms of their development over five years. We focus on icons and welcome screens, two highly standardized formats through which ideal user types and usage scenarios are communicated. Methodologically, we adapt documentary image interpretation to the study of graphical user interfaces, accounting for their specific intertwining of imagery, text, and operativity. This image-analytical approach provides systematic access to the discursive-normative aspects of subjectivation processes. As simultaneous and aesthetically affecting media, images can immediately (re)present specific subject figures, thereby normatively setting offers for subjectivation. We understand mood-tracking apps as media micro-dispositifs that interact with overarching sociocultural discourses. Against this background, we identify three structural principles and developmental trends in mood tracking: 1. the framing of emotional self-observation as a means to enhance individual well-being and success; 2. a novel form of affective availability, promising a technologically supported readability of the self; and 3. a visually staged dissolution of opposing subject requirements (relaxation vs. productivity) while simultaneously obscuring structural problems.
Authors with CRIS profile
Involved external institutions
Universität Wien / University of Vienna
Austria (AT)
Bertha von Suttner Privatuniversität St. Pölten (BSU)
Austria (AT)
Austria (AT)
Bertha von Suttner Privatuniversität St. Pölten (BSU)
Austria (AT)
How to cite
APA:
Meister, M., Pritz, S., Przyborski, A., & Slunecko, T. (2025). On the Visuality of Mood Tracking Apps: Emotional Self-Quantification and Ideals of Affective Subjectivity Subjektfiguren der Gefühlsvermessung: zur Bildlichkeit von Mood-Tracking-Apps. Forum qualitative Sozialforschung, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-26.2.4394
MLA:
Meister, Moritz, et al. "On the Visuality of Mood Tracking Apps: Emotional Self-Quantification and Ideals of Affective Subjectivity Subjektfiguren der Gefühlsvermessung: zur Bildlichkeit von Mood-Tracking-Apps." Forum qualitative Sozialforschung 26.2 (2025).
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