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、传播与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协商他们的亲密文化。这项研究倾向于关注这些男性如何使用诸如Grindr和Scruff之类的“勾搭”应用程序来组织随意的性接触，特别是与更安全的性谈判有关。在此过程中，大部分研究丰富了我们对同性恋和双性恋男性随意性行为的理解；知情的艾滋病毒预防战略；并开始阐明数字媒体在这两种相关背景下的作用。然而，到目前为止，这项研究只关注约炮应用，忽视了一些与智能手机使用和这些男性之间的亲密关系有关的重要问题。同性恋和双性恋男性不仅使用约炮应用来协商他们的亲密生活，这并不完全是由随意性行为定义的；他们经常在智能手机的不同方面（例如手机本身、摄像头、其他社交媒体应用程序）之间切换，以实践不同类型的亲密关系（例如一夫一妻制关系、开放式关系、一次性接触、持续的随意性伴侣、不忠行为）。研究这些做法不仅会影响人们对男同性恋和双性恋男性亲密行为的普遍理解（这往往是由随意的性行为过度决定的），而且还会影响公共卫生部门在预防艾滋病毒之外如何有效地提供服务，改善这些男性的整体健康和福祉。现有的研究也倾向于将这种智能手机的使用脱离语境，没有充分考虑到这种使用发生的更广泛的社会文化条件。在社会文化背景下，男同性恋和双性恋男性使用智能手机来协商亲密关系，不仅对男同性恋和双性恋男性的观念和态度正在发生变化（例如同性恋婚姻合法化，对男同性恋和双性恋男性更普遍的态度正在自由化），而且他们进行亲密关系的物质条件也在发生变化（例如同性恋夜生活的变化；艾滋病预防和治疗的变化；以及不断更新的智能手机和互联网技术）。这个项目从文化研究的角度出发，即媒体的使用不能在这种使用发生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使用智能手机的不同方面来协商不同类型的亲密关系的各种方式。为此，它将部署一个跨学科的研究团队，这些研究人员具有公共卫生、媒体和文化研究的背景，并与项目的合作伙伴——特伦斯·希金斯信托基金、伦敦之友和韦弗利护理中心——密切合作，这些都是与同性恋和双性恋男性打交道的关键第三部门组织。利用这些不同的专业知识，该项目将采用一种创新的混合方法，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名男性的访谈和焦点小组——伦敦和苏格兰东部的农村和城市部分。这种双站点方法旨在捕捉这一群体在智能手机使用中基于地点的文化差异。文化分析将着眼于范围广泛的文件，这些文件将有助于绘制这种智能手机使用的背景，例如，从媒体表示到政策文件。该项目将通过对数据集进行跨案例分析来得出结论——为这种智能手机的使用与更广泛的社会文化条件之间的关系提供一幅丰富而细致的画面。

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.