Conference Program

In contemporary digital ecosystems, the boundary between expert biomedical knowledge and lived reproductive experience is reconfigured by algorithms, platforms and infrastructures. Historically, many technological monitoring practices in pregnancy have developed from the representation of the female body as an inherently unpredictable system that requires technological control in order to ensure safety and risk prevention (Davis-Floyd, 1992). These dynamics are being reshaped by processes of health datafication and platformisation (van Dijck et al., 2018) through which bodily processes are translated into measurable data, with the risk to reinforce processes of biomedicalization (Lombardi, 2009; Lupton, 2012). Tracking apps and platforms not merely inform but actively govern the pedagogical ecologies of expectant parents and their partners trough biomedical information and training programmes. From posthuman perspectives, such transformations point to the active role of data infrastructures and digital platforms in reshaping the spaces of democratic learning. This paper examines how digital infrastructures and platforms participate in sociomaterial assemblages that reshape the epistemic cultures through which reproductive knowledge is produced, validated, and circulated (Knorr-Cetina, 1999).

Within this context, new forms of professional mediation emerge, such as the figure of the influ-activist doctor (Lovari & Lombi, 2024), who negotiates their authority between scientific expertise, public pedagogy, communicative accessibility, and algorithmic visibility, while also monetizing their expertise through courses and training programmes targeting both healthcare professionals and expectant parents. In these environments, platforms, algorithms, and data infrastructures participate in governing the pedagogical ecologies through which reproductive knowledge is produced, circulated, and authorized. The paper therefore discusses the ambivalences of these processes: while digital edutainment may reduce informational asymmetries and foster forms of cognitive empowerment, the growing media visibility of reproductive journeys also introduces risks of spectacle, polarization, and the commodification of health.

This research, currently in an exploratory phase, combines digital ethnography with a walkthrough analysis (Light et al., 2018) examining how reproductive platforms and influ-activist doctors and other healthcare professionals who use digital spaces to foster participatory forms of reproductive knowledge and democratic learning. Through educational content, training programmes, testimonies, and experiential narratives, these sociomaterial assemblages — composed of platforms, algorithmic infrastructures, digital communities, and influ-activist doctors — participate in the ongoing reconfiguration of epistemic boundaries between biomedical expertise and experiential knowledge. From this perspective, reproductive knowledge emerges through more-than-human assemblages of bodies, data, platforms, and professional actors, raising new questions about care, responsibility, and the democratic governance of reproductive knowledge.