How does mobile media redefine public/private spaces, intimate relationships, communicative possibilities, and collapsing contexts (Boyd, 2010; Fortunati, 2002; Hjorth & Khoo, 2015; Lasén & Casado, 2012)? Using a case study of Hong Kong lesbian app Butterfly, I explicate how and why users cosituate on and off the app within their context. By analyzing digital ethnography and offline interviews data, I argue that Butterfly provides a mobile communication infrastructure for users to meet their lesbian needs and desires of (in)visible self, relationships, and community. The spatiality and mobility of the app enable users to cosituate in (a) the online and offline public and private spaces, (b) the disclosure and concealment of lesbian identities, and (c) the individual lesbian fantasies and sociocultural, political, and religious contexts. However, users’ cosituation as tactical resistance to the heteronormative context does not come without a cost.
BaymN. K. (2009). A call for grounding in the face of blurred boundaries. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(3), 720–723.
3.
BaymN. K. (2011). Social networks 2.0. In ConsalvoM.EssC. (Eds.), The handbook of Internet studies (pp. 384–405). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
4.
BlackwellC.BirnholtzJ.AbbottC. (2014). Seeing and being seen: Co-situation and impression formation using Grindr, a location-aware gay dating app. New Media & Society. doi:10.1177/1461444814521595
5.
BloomT.GielenA.GlassN. (2016). Developing an app for college women in abusive same-sex relationships and their friends. Journal of Homosexuality, 63(6), 855–874.
6.
BoydD. (2010). Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In PapachararissiZ. (Ed.), A networked self (pp. 39–58). London, UK: Routledge.
7.
BoydD. (2015). Making sense of teen life: Strategies for capturing ethnographic data in a networked era. In HargittaiE.SanvigC. (Eds.), Digital research confidential: The secrets of studying behavior online (pp. 79–102). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
8.
BrubakerJ. R.AnannyM.CrawfordK. (2014). Departing glances: A sociotechnical account of “leaving” Grindr. New Media & Society, 18(3), 373–390.
9.
CassidyE. M. (2013). Gay men, social media and self-presentation: Managing identities in Gaydar, Facebook and beyond (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
ChanL. S. (2017). The role of gay identity confusion and outness in sex-seeking on mobile dating apps among men who have sex with men: A conditional process analysis. Journal of Homosexuality, 64(5), 622–637.
13.
ChiaJ. L.BarrowA. (2015). Inching towards equality: LGBT rights and the limitations of law in Hong Kong. William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, 22(2), 303–331.
14.
CorbinJ.StraussA. (2008). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
15.
CresswellT. (2006). On the move: Mobility in the modern Western world. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
CumiskeyK. M.HjorthL. (Eds.). (2013). Mobile media practices, presence and politics: The challenge of being seamlessly mobile. New York, NY: Routledge.
18.
De RidderS. (2013). Are digital media institutions shaping youth’s intimate stories? Strategies and tactics in the social networking site Netlog. New Media & Society, 17(3), 353–374.
19.
De Souza e SilvaA. (2006). From cyber to hybrid: Mobile technologies as interfaces of hybrid space. Space and Culture, 9, 261–278.
20.
ElliottA.UrryJ. (2010). Mobile lives. New York, NY: Routledge.
FortunatiL. (2002). The mobile phone: Towards new categories and social relations. Information, Communication & Society, 5(4), 513–528.
23.
FortunatiL.TaipaleS. (2017). Mobilities and the network of personal technologies: Refining the understanding of mobility structure. Telematics and Informatics, 34(2), 560–568.
24.
FotopoulouA. (2012). Intersectionality queer studies and hybridity: Methodological frameworks for social research. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 13(2), 19–32.
25.
FoucaultM. (1986). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27.
26.
GoetzJ. P.LeCompteM. D. (1981). Ethnographic research and the problem of data reduction. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 12(1), 51–70.
GrayM. L. (2009). Out in the country: Youth, media, and queer visibility in rural America. New York, NY: New York University Press.
29.
GreeneT. (2014). Gay neighborhoods and the rights of the vicarious citizen. City & Community, 13(2), 99–118.
30.
HineC. (2015). Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, embodied and everyday. London, UK: Bloomsbury.
31.
HjorthL. (2008). Being real in the mobile reel: A case study on convergent mobile media as domesticated new media in Seoul, South Korea. Convergence, 14(1), 91–104.
32.
HjorthL. (2009). Imaging communities: Gendered mobile media in the Asia-Pacific. The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 90309, 1–31.
33.
HjorthL. (2013). The place of the emplaced mobile: A case study into gendered locative media practices. Mobile Media & Communication, 1(1), 110–115.
34.
HjorthL.KhooO. (2015). Intimate entanglements: New media in Asia. In HjorthL.KhooO. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of new media in Asia (pp. 1–13). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
35.
HoJ. (2008). Is global governance bad for East Asian queers?GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 14(4), 457–479.
36.
HoP. S. Y. (2006). The (charmed) circle game: Reflections on sexual hierarchy through multiple sexual relationships. Sexualities, 9(5), 547–564.
37.
HoP. S. Y.HuY. (2016). Pray the gay away: Identity conflict between Christianity and sexuality in Hong Kong sexual minorities. Gender, Place & Culture, 23(12), 1725–1737.
38.
HoP. S. Y.TsangK. T. (2012). Sex and desire in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
39.
KongT. S. (2010). Chinese male homosexualities: Memba, tongzhi and golden boy. New York, NY: Routledge.
40.
LasénA.CasadoE. (2012). Mobile telephony and the remediation of couple intimacy. Feminist Media Studies, 12(4), 550–559.
41.
LefebvreH. (1974). 1991: The production of space (Nicholson-SmithD. Trans.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
42.
LiC. Y. (2012). The absence of fan activism in the queer fandom of Ho Denise Wan See (HOCC) in Hong Kong. Transformative Works and Cultures, 10. doi:10.3983/twc.2012.0325
43.
MarcusG. E. (1998). Ethnography through thick and thin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
44.
McGlottenS. (2013). Virtual intimacies: Media, affect, and queer sociality. New York, NY: SUNY Press.
45.
MilneE. (2012). Letters, postcards, email: Technologies of presence. New York, NY: Routledge.
46.
MorleyD. (2006). What’s “home” got to do with it? Contradictory dynamics in the domestication of technology and the dislocation of domesticity. In BerkerT.HartmannM.PunieY.WardK. (Ed.), Domestication of media and technology (1st ed., pp. 21–36). Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
47.
MowlabocusS. (2010). Gaydar culture: Gay men, technology and embodiment in the digital age. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
48.
MurrayS.AnkersonS. M. (2016). Lez takes time: Designing lesbian contact in geosocial networking apps. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33(1), 53–69.
49.
O’RiordanK.PhilipsD. J. (2007). Queer online: Media technology & sexuality. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
50.
PrøitzL. (2017). Visual social media and affectivity: The impact of the image of Alan Kurdi and young people’s response to the refugee crisis in Oslo and Sheffield. Information, Communication & Society. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2017.1290129
51.
PullenC.CooperM. (Eds.). (2010). LGBT identity and online new media. New York, NY: Routledge.
StanciuE. L. (2014). Urban space and queer identities: The LGBTQ Film Festival as heterotopia. Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies, 3(17), 159–177.
54.
TangD. T. S. (2011). Conditional space: Hong Kong lesbian desires and everyday life. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
55.
TangD. T. S. (2015). Essential labels? Gender identity politics on Hong Kong lesbian mobile phone application Butterfly. In HjorthL.KhooO. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of new media in Asia (pp. 263–274). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
56.
TangD. T. S. (2017). All I get is an emoji: Dating on lesbian mobile phone app Butterfly. Media, Culture & Society, 39(6), 816–832.
57.
UrryJ. (2012). Sociology beyond societies: Mobilities for the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Routledge.
58.
WakefordN. (2002). New technologies and “cyber-queer” research. In RichardsonD.SeidmanS. (Eds.), Handbook of lesbian & gay studies (pp. 115–144). London, UK: SAGE.
