Laying the foundation for iCANmeditate: A mixed methods study protocol for understanding patient and oncologist perspectives on meditation.

BACKGROUND: People with cancer experience heightened levels of stress and anxiety, including psychological or physical. In recent years, digitally delivered complimentary therapies, such as meditation, have gained attention in cancer research and advocacy communities for improving quality of life. However, most digital meditation resources are commercially available and are not tailored to the unique needs of cancer patients (addressing fears of recurrence). As such, this study lays the foundation to co-design a publicly available digital meditation program called iCANmeditate that contains cancer-specific meditation content. AIMS: To understand: (1) cancer patients' perceptions and practices of meditation, as well as their needs in addressing the stress that accompanies their cancer diagnosis and (2) current knowledge of meditation and prescribing trends amongst oncologists in Canada. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: A mixed-methods design comprised of online patient and oncologist surveys and interviews with patients will be used. Survey data analysis will use multivariate logistic regressions to examine predictors of: (1) interest in using a meditation app among patients and (2) prescribing meditation among oncologists. Patient interviews will gather insights about the contexts of daily living where meditation would be most beneficial for people with cancer; this data will be analyzed thematically. DISCUSSION: The results of this study will inform iterative co-design workshops with cancer patients to build the digital meditation program iCANmeditate; interview results will be used to develop vignettes or "personas" that will supply the initial stimulus material for the iterative co-design workshops. Once the program has been finalized in partnership with cancer patient participants, a usability and pilot study will follow to test the functionality and efficacy of the tool. Results from the oncologist survey will form the basis of knowledge mobilization efforts to facilitate clinical buy-in and awareness of the benefits of meditation to cancer patients.

Food Promotion and Children's Health: Considering Best Practices for Teaching and Evaluating Media Literacy on Food Marketing.

Food marketing to children is ubiquitous and persuasive. It primarily promotes foods of poor nutritional quality, influences children's food preferences and habits, and is a factor in childhood obesity. Given that food marketing relentlessly targets children in traditional/digital media and the built environment, children need critical media literacy skills that build their understanding of food marketing's persuasive effects. However, little research connects media literacy with food marketing and health, including effective strategies for teaching and evaluating such programming for children. This perspective presents the outcomes of a stakeholder meeting on best practices in teaching and evaluation on media literacy and food marketing to children. Strategies for promoting critical thinking (teaching content, teaching practices, teaching supports, and parent/caregiver involvement), and strategies for measuring critical thinking (program effectiveness and broader long-term impacts) were identified. These include, among other things, the need to capture the range of marketing formats and current food promotion trends, to include inquiry-based and co-creation activities, and to support ongoing media literacy development. Overall, these strategies suggest useful criteria for media literacy programming related to food marketing, and highlight the importance of media literacy for giving children the skills to navigate a complex food environment.

Visualizing the datasphere: Representations of old bodies and their data in promotional images of smart sensor technologies for aging at home.

Technologies for people aging at home are increasingly prevalent and include ambient monitoring devices that work together with wearables to remotely track and monitor older adults' biometric data and activities of daily living. There is, however, little research into the promotional and speculative images of technology-in-use. Our paper examines the ways in which the datafication of aging is offered up visually by technology companies to promote their products. Specifically, we ask: how are data visualized in promotional images of smart sensor technologies for aging at home? And in these visualizations, what happens to the aging body and relations of care? We include in our definition of smart sensor technologies both wearable and ambient monitoring devices, so long as they are used for the in-home passive monitoring of the inhabitant by a caregiver, excluding those devices targeted for institutional settings or those used for self-monitoring purposes. Our sample consists of 221 images collected between January and July of 2021 from the websites of 14 English-language companies that offer smart sensor technology for aging at home. Following a visual semiotic analysis, we present 3 themes on the visual representation of old bodies and their data: (1) Captured Data, (2) Spatialized Data, and (3) Networked Data. Each, we argue, contribute to a broader visualization of the "datasphere". We conclude by highlighting the underlying assumptions of old bodies in the co-constitution of aging and technologies in which the fleshy and lived corporeality of bodies is more often lost, reduced to data points and automated care scenarios, and further disentangled from other bodies, contexts and things.

Age transcended: a semiotic and rhetorical analysis of the discourse of agelessness in North American anti-aging skin care advertisements.

Drawing from a collection of over 160 North American print advertisements for anti-aging skin care products from January to December of 2009, this paper examines the discourse of agelessness, a vision of esthetic perfection and optimal health that is continually referred to by gerontologists, cultural theorists, and scientific researchers as a state of being to which humankind can aspire. Employing critical discourse analysis through the use of semiotics and visual rhetoric, this paper explores the means through which anti-aging skin care advertisements present to their viewers a particular object of desire, looking, more specifically, at how agelessness is presented as a way out and ultimate transcendence of age. Through the analytical tools of semiotics and visual rhetoric, four visions of agelessness are identified and explored in this paper: Agelessness as Scientific Purity, Agelessness as Genetic Impulse, Agelessness as Nature's Essence, and Agelessness as Myth. Whether found in the heights of scientific purity, the inner core of our genetic impulse, the depths of nature's essence, or whether agelessness itself has reached its own, untouchable, mythic status, the advertisements in this study represent one of the most pervasive vehicles through which our current vision(s) of ageless perfection are reflected, reinforced, and suspended in a drop of cream.