Mobile lovers: Affordances, spaces, and narrativisation among dating app users in Berlin

数字技术被编织到日常生活的各个部分，调解着经历、实践、相遇和亲密关系。我的工作考察了平台的承受能力及其与用户相关的特定文化使用环境。通过负担，我指的是技术可以开放或约束某些社会行动和做法的方式-当我们互动时，它们允许我们做什么，如何做以及为什么做。我使用人种志方法，这意味着我在人们的日常生活中与他们共度时光，让我能够确定他们所使用的技术的社会影响。我的方法的创新之处在于，它不寻求在线和线下空间之间的区别，而是在他们特定的文化环境中对待用户及其跨平台互动，从而解释了体验的多样性。我专门研究了约会应用程序，调查了约会仪式和亲密--人类体验和欲望的普遍中心--是如何促进数字媒体和交流的演变的。我回顾了围绕网络浪漫和关于技术创新的道德恐慌的宏大叙事，将重点放在个人身上，揭示用户的观点，从而解释体验的真正多样性。该奖学金将为一个多层次的综合发展项目提供资金。首先，我将把我的博士研究作为一本书出版，提供一个全面而复杂的视角，了解柏林的亲密关系和科技之间的关系。这本书将强调技术如何不再是“真实”和“虚拟”之间的分界线，而是现实和虚拟的谈判在其上展开的画布。通过我花了一年多时间收集的人类叙事，这本书将概述技术是如何跨文化环境社会化的，以及约会应用如何形成一个有形的核心，用户可以围绕这个核心导航约会仪式、浪漫传记和城市空间中的数字媒介亲密关系。这项工作将对我们对科技、亲密关系和日常生活的理解做出重大贡献。其次，我将在一份高影响力的同行评议期刊上发表一篇文章，概述在约会应用程序和使用聊天采访等数字平台上进行研究的方法和伦理影响。这篇文章将强调数字民族志在调查用户生活中不同媒体和空间的亲密关系方面的巨大潜力，以及研究人员如何以及在这些环境中以伦理的方式定位自己。该奖学金旨在通过我参加两个涉及网络世界和社会研究的顶级会议，促进专业网络的发展，不仅在我所在的大学内，而且更重要的是在全球范围内。奖学金的目标包括培养与跨学科学者的联系，并培养使我能够在学术生涯中迈出下一步的关系。最后，为了使我的工作能够接触到更广泛的受众，我将实施一个创新的数据可视化项目。我计划在柏林拍摄并制作一部民族志电影，我的研究就是在那里进行的。利用我作为一名电影制作人的技能，我将把我的博士研究和专著的理论和人种学发现整合到一幅视觉作品中，希望以身临其境的方式描绘柏林想象中的亲密环境，以及约会应用如何融入这种文化并被这种文化塑造。在数据呈现中利用录像是与原本被排除在学术话语之外的群体进行交流的重要工具，并确保在传统出版手段限制获取时，研究的好处达到目标。

Digital technologies are woven into all parts of everyday life, mediating experiences, practices, encounters and intimacies. My work examines the affordances of platforms and their specific cultural environment of use in relation to users. By affordances, I refer to the way technologies can open up, or constrain, certain social actions and practices - what they allow us to do, and how and why - when we interact. I use ethnographic methods, meaning I spend time with people in their everyday lives, allowing me to determine the social impact of the technologies they utilise. My approach innovates in that it does not seek to create distinctions between online and offline spaces but treats users and their interactions across platforms within their specific cultural environment, thus accounting for a diversity in experience. Looking specifically at dating apps, I investigate how dating rituals and intimacy - a universal centre of human experience and desire - are contributing to the evolution of digital media and communication. I peel back the grand narratives around romance online and moral panics concerning technological innovations, to focus on the personal, to shine a light on the perspective of the user, and thus to account for true diversity in experience.The fellowship will provide funding for a comprehensive development program with multiple strands. Firstly, I will publish my doctoral study as a book, providing a comprehensive and intricate view of the relation between intimacy and technology in Berlin. The book will highlight how technology is no longer the point of delineation between "real" and "virtual", but rather the canvas upon which negotiations of reality and virtuality play out. Through the collection of human narratives that I spent over a year compiling, the book will serve as an overview of how technologies are socialised across cultural environments and how dating apps form a tangible nucleus around which users navigate dating rituals, romantic biographies, and digitally mediated intimacies within city space. The work will make a significant contribution to our understanding of technology, intimacy, and everyday life.Secondly, I will publish an article in a high-impact peer-reviewed journal, outlining the methodological and ethical implications of conducting research on digital platforms such as dating apps and employing chat interviews. The article will highlight the significant potential of digital ethnography in investigating intimacy across different media and spaces in the lives of users, and how and where a researcher can situate themselves ethically within these environments.The fellowship aims to facilitate the growth of a professional network, both within my host university, but also more significantly on a global scale, via my participation in two top-ranking conferences dealing with the study of the online world and the social. The fellowship objectives include fostering connections with scholars across disciplines and nurturing relationships that will allow me to take the next step in my academic career.Finally, to enable my work to reach a broader audience, I will conduct an innovative data visualisation project. I plan to shoot and produce an ethnographic piece of filmmaking in Berlin, where my research was conducted. Utilising my skills as a filmmaker I will incorporate the theoretical and ethnographic findings of my doctoral study and monograph into a visual piece, hoping to paint an immersive portrait of the imagined intimate environment of Berlin, and the way dating apps feed into and are shaped by this culture. The utilisation of videography in data presentation is an important tool to communicate with groups otherwise excluded from academic discourse and ensures that the benefits of research reach their targets when traditional means of publication restrict access.