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Week 8: Dating, Sexting, and Mobile Intimacy

Mandatory Reading

  • Robards, B., & Lincoln, S. (2016). Making It “Facebook Official”: Reflecting on Romantic Relationships Through Sustained Facebook Use. Social Media + Society, 2.
  • Dobson, A. S. (2018). Sexting, intimate and sexual media practices, and social justice. In Dobson et al. (ed.). Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media, pp. 93-110.
  • Chan, L. S. (2018). Ambivalence in networked intimacy: Observations from gay men using mobile dating apps. New Media & Society, 20(7), 2566-2581.
  • Vares, T. (2023). ‘When you delete Tinder it’s a sign of commitment’: leaving dating apps and the reproduction of romantic, monogamous relationship practices. Journal of Sociology, 59, 975 - 990.

Further Reading

  • Tiidenberg, K. (2016). Boundaries and conflict in a NSFW community on tumblr: The meanings and uses of selfies. New Media & Society, 18(8), 1563-1578. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814567984 TikTok_Syllabus
  • Chan, L. S. (2021). The politics of dating apps: Gender, sexuality, and emergent publics in urban China. MIT Press.

Rationale

As hinted earlier, this module represents one of the earliest and most dynamic areas of discussion regarding "digital intimacies." The established discussions facilitate comprehensive reviews that address the complexities of "intimacy," rather than merely categorizing behaviors as "romantic" or "sexual" (Robards & Lincoln, 2016; Dobson, 2018). Research on dating, sexting, and other mobile forms of intimacy reveals tensions between heteronormative and queer perspectives, as well as between connectivity and disconnectivity, similar to the considerations of "intimate relationships" in offline contexts (Chan, 2018; Vares, 2023).