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Paper Short Abstract:

The experience of online communication can include elements such as humour, play/gaming, visual forms such as food, and fun interactions such as competitions. We used these observations to create an innovative health intervention called Trini Food Quiz (try downloading this on your phone).

Paper Abstract:

The overall session is focused on the more experiential and sensual aspects of the digital experience. This paper will start from that perspective but then ask how what we learn from this orientation might be employed for digital doing. In this case for creating a novel health intervention for people in Trinidad and Tobago. Working with a Trinidadian anthropologist Sheba Mohammid we started from the observation that established health information was not successful. The evidence that over half the population remains opposed to COVID-19 vaccination. Our solution was to focus on what people seem to enjoy and respond to in digital communication. This included the visual - often pictures of food, the importance of humour, competition, playing games and having an active social exchange. All things that foster the online as a form of active and enjoyable experience.

Based on this evidence we developed a completely different approach to disseminating health information. The aim was to make people aware of the relationship between diet (especially salt) and hypertension - the main co-morbidity of Covid. We first created a competition based on visual posting of health recipes on Facebook. We then created a game, most of which is a fun quiz about local food facts. You can download this on your phone as Trini Food Quiz. Already we have 16k downloads and will be surveying to see what people learnt from this approach to health information as digital experience and ultimately whether it can save lives.