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| Distributed assemblages of cognition and health (or) how TikTok ate my mind |
A chapter by Dr Jamie Mcphie and Dr Dave Clarke, University of Cumbria, has been published in the Routledge handbook on spaces of mental health and wellbeing (2024).
Jamie introduces the work in context:
'Mental health and wellbeing are affected by the various environments and cultural constructs we plug in and out of. These environments could be national parks and protected areas, or they could be the environment of virtual space (another protected area), which maintains its own ecology. This book chapter links to the work being undertaken at University of Cumbria's Centre for National Parks & Protected Areas by exploring and unearthing the ecological relations between humans and virtual environments. Given this context, we consider virtual environments to be, potentially, therapeutic landscapes.
'With this chapter, we attempt to ‘think with’ virtual space as we grapple with the topic/s – health, social media, creative space. But this virtual world isn't simply the binary opposite of a physical world – an actual. It's not some ghostly space devoid of material. Virtual space is entirely material and as such entangles itself ecologically with anything that engages with it, including thinking – cognition. So, thinking this way, what might the health implications be when we think with social media (for example, TikTok)? This chapter ‘thinks itself creatively with the writing’ – meaning it develops as a relationship among many influences such as the authors, audiences and technologies used, with some degree of its own agency. It moves through, wrestles with, and queer(ie)s the ecological concepts it explores, from assemblages of health and embodied cognition to social media, misogyny, and fascism, drawing upon the ‘extended theories of mind’ referenced in the chapter.'
Mcphie, Jamie and Clarke, David (2024) Distributed assemblages of cognition and health (or) how TikTok ate my mind. In: Boyd, Candice, Boyle, Louise, Bell, Sarah, Högström, Ebba, Evans, Joshua, Paul, Alak and Foley, Ronan, (eds.) Routledge handbook on spaces of mental health and wellbeing. Routledge, London, UK, pp. 283-290.
Image: Jamie & Dave Selfie. Photo by Dave Clarke, 2024.
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