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

数字技术融入了日常生活的各个方面，调解经验，实践，相遇和亲密关系。我的工作研究了平台的可供性及其与用户相关的特定文化环境。所谓启示，我指的是技术可以打开或限制某些社会行为和实践的方式--它们允许我们做什么，以及如何和为什么--当我们互动时。我使用人种学方法，这意味着我花时间与人们在日常生活中，让我确定他们使用的技术的社会影响。我的方法创新之处在于，它不寻求在线上和线下空间之间建立区别，而是在特定的文化环境中对待用户及其跨平台的互动，从而解释体验的多样性。特别是在约会应用程序，我调查如何约会仪式和亲密关系-人类经验和欲望的普遍中心-有助于数字媒体和通信的发展。我将围绕网络恋情和技术创新的道德恐慌的宏大叙事剥离出来，专注于个人，从用户的角度出发，从而解释体验的真正多样性。该奖学金将为一个多方面的综合开发计划提供资金。首先，我将出版我的博士研究作为一本书，提供一个全面和复杂的观点之间的关系亲密和技术在柏林。这本书将突出技术如何不再是“真实的”和“虚拟”之间的分界点，而是现实和虚拟的谈判所发挥的画布。通过收集我花了一年多时间编写的人类叙事，这本书将概述技术如何在文化环境中社会化，以及约会应用程序如何形成一个有形的核心，用户围绕它浏览约会仪式，浪漫传记，以及城市空间内的数字媒介亲密关系。这项工作将对我们理解技术、亲密关系和日常生活做出重大贡献。其次，我将在一份影响力很大的同行评审期刊上发表一篇文章，概述在约会应用程序和使用聊天访谈等数字平台上进行研究的方法论和伦理意义。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哪里可以在这些环境中道德地保护自己。该奖学金旨在促进专业网络的发展，无论是在我所在的大学，还是更重要的是在全球范围内，通过我参加两个顶级会议，处理网络世界和社会的研究。奖学金的目标包括促进与跨学科学者的联系，并培养关系，使我能够在我的学术生涯中迈出下一步。最后，为了使我的工作能够接触到更广泛的受众，我将进行一个创新的数据可视化项目。我计划在柏林拍摄和制作一部民族志电影，我的研究就是在那里进行的。利用我作为电影制作人的技能，我将把我的博士研究和专著的理论和民族志研究成果融入到一个视觉作品中，希望描绘出一幅沉浸式的柏林想象中的亲密环境的肖像，以及约会应用程序融入这种文化并被这种文化塑造的方式。在数据展示中使用录像是与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访问时，研究的好处达到其目标。

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.