Digital Intimacies: how gay and bisexual men use smartphones to negotiate their cultures of intimacy

自2007年智能手机广泛普及以来，媒体、通讯和文化研究以及公共卫生学者一直在研究同性恋和双性恋男性如何利用智能手机来谈判他们的亲密文化。这项研究倾向于关注这些男性如何使用Grindr和Sruff等“勾搭”应用程序来组织随意的性行为，特别是在与更安全的性行为谈判有关的方面。通过这样做，这项研究在很大程度上丰富了我们对同性恋和双性恋男性随意性行为的理解；了解了艾滋病预防策略；并开始阐明数字媒体在这两个相关环境中的作用。然而，由于专注于勾搭应用程序，这项研究迄今忽略了一些与这些男性使用智能手机和亲密关系相关的重要问题。同性恋和双性恋男性不仅使用勾搭应用程序来协商他们的亲密生活，这并不完全由随意的性行为定义；他们经常在智能手机的不同方面(例如手机本身、相机、其他社交媒体应用程序)之间迁移，以实践不同类型的亲密关系(例如一夫一妻制关系、开放的关系、一次性接触、正在进行的随意性伴侣、不忠)。研究这些行为不仅会影响大众对同性恋和双性恋男性亲密关系的理解(这通常被随意的性行为过度确定)，还会影响到公共卫生部门如何有效地提供服务，以改善这些男性的整体健康和福祉，而不仅仅是艾滋病毒预防。现有的研究还倾向于将这种智能手机的使用脱离背景，而没有完全考虑到这种使用发生的更广泛的社会文化条件。男同性恋者和双性恋者使用智能手机在社会文化背景下谈判亲密关系，在这种社会文化背景下，不仅对男同性恋者和双性恋者的观念和态度正在发生变化(例如，同性婚姻合法化，对男同性恋者和双性恋者的更普遍的态度自由化)，而且他们进行亲密行为的物质条件也在改变(例如，同性恋夜生活的变化；艾滋病毒预防和治疗的变化；以及不断更新智能手机和互联网技术)。本项目从文化研究的角度出发，认为媒体的使用不能在发生这种使用的文化之外得到充分的理解。因此，它旨在了解同性恋和双性恋男性在不断变化的社会文化条件下，如何使用智能手机的不同方面来协商不同类型的亲密关系。为此，它将部署一支具有公共卫生、媒体和文化研究背景的跨学科研究团队，并与该项目的合作伙伴--特伦斯·希金斯信托、伦敦朋友和韦弗利关怀--密切合作，这些都是与同性恋和双性恋男性合作的关键第三部门组织。利用这些不同的专业知识，该项目将使用一种创新的混合方法方法，将文化分析与定性方法相结合。定性方法将是对来自英国两个不同地点的40名男性进行采访和焦点小组--伦敦和苏格兰东部的农村和城市地区。这一双地点方法旨在捕捉这一群体在智能手机使用方面基于地点的文化差异。文化分析将着眼于广泛的文件，这些文件将有助于绘制智能手机使用的背景，例如，从媒体表述到政策文件。该项目将通过对数据集进行跨案例分析来得出结论--提供这类智能手机使用与其发生的更广泛社会文化条件相关的丰富而细微的图景。

Since smartphones became widely available in 2007 both media, communications & cultural studies and public health academics have been researching how gay and bisexual men use them to negotiate their cultures of intimacy. This research has tended to focus on how these men use 'hook-up' applications, such as Grindr and Scruff, to organise casual sex encounters, particularly in relation to safer sex negotiation. In doing so, much of this research has enriched our understanding of gay and bisexual men's casual sex practices; informed HIV prevention strategies; and begun to shed light on the role of digital media in both of these related contexts.However, by focusing on hook-up apps, this research has so far overlooked some important issues that relate to smartphone use and intimacy amongst these men. Gay and bisexual men do not only use hook-up apps to negotiate their intimate lives, which are not exclusively defined by casual sex; they frequently migrate between different aspects of their smartphones (e.g. the phone itself, the camera, other social media applications) to practice different sorts of intimacy (e.g. monogamous relationships, open relationships, one off sexual encounters, on-going casual sex partners, infidelities). Researching these practices will have implications not only for popular understandings of gay and bisexual male intimacy (which are often over-determined by casual sex), but also for how effectively the public health sector can provide services that improve the overall health and wellbeing of these men beyond HIV prevention.The existing research also has a tendency to decontextualize this smartphone use, not fully accounting for the wider socio-cultural conditions in which this use takes place. Gay and bisexual men use smartphones to negotiate intimacy in socio-cultural contexts in which not only ideas and attitudes towards gay and bisexual men are changing (e.g. the legalization of gay marriage, liberalization of more general attitudes to gay and bisexual men) but the material conditions in which they practice intimacy are changing too (e.g. changes in gay nightlife; changes in HIV prevention and treatment; and constantly updating smartphone and internet technologies). This project begins from the cultural studies perspective that media use cannot be adequately made sense of outside of the cultures in which this use takes place. It therefore aims to understand the various ways that gay and bisexual men use different aspects of their smartphones to negotiate different sorts of intimacies within these constantly shifting socio-cultural conditions. It will do this by deploying an interdisciplinary team of researchers with backgrounds in public health and media and cultural studies and by working closely with the project's partners - Terrence Higgins Trust, London Friend and Waverley Care - all key third sector organisations working with gay and bisexual men. Drawing on these various expertise, this project will use an innovative mixed method approach that combines cultural analysis with qualitative methods. The qualitative methods will be interviews and focus groups with 40 men from two different locations in the UK - London and both rural and urban parts of Eastern Scotland. This dual sited approach is designed to capture place-based cultural differences in smartphone use amongst this group. The cultural analysis will look at a wide range of documents that will help map the context for this smartphone use, from, for example, media representations to policy documents. The project will form its conclusions by performing a cross-case analysis across the data sets - providing a rich and nuanced picture of this sort of smartphone use in relation to the wider socio-cultural conditions in which it takes place.