A GPS to finding love in a congested place.

Atienza, Paul Michael Leonardo

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/103700 Copy

Description

Title

A GPS to finding love in a congested place.

Author(s)

Atienza, Paul Michael Leonardo

Contributor(s)

the Donald and Barbara Smalley Graduate Research Fellowship from the Department of Gender and Women's Studies

Issue Date

2019

Keyword(s)

Anthropology

Abstract

"In Manila, Philippines, the social media capital of the world, people spend nearly four hours a day on their mobile phones. They spend nearly as much time stuck in traffic everyday. Popular media and tech companies claim that technology helps connect people from around the world much quicker than before. My qualitative study analyzes people's imaginative uses of digital technologies in their daily life in order to provide complex perspectives to claims of technology's speed and ease. I examine the lives of gay Filipino men looking for love, sex, and other forms of intimate connection through mobile digital media. I assert that the combination of forced wait time and poor urban infrastructures influence how gay Filipino men decide if a potential love connection is a match. For example, a study participant explained how he picked strategic spots along his 30-mile, two-hour commute to turn on the dating app Grindr. Turning on the app would populate his interface with other local users in those areas. ""I schedule meet-ups around the city on the way back home,"" he said. My project demonstrates the ways gay Filipino men remap the city into zones of desire tied to technology's promise of meeting ""the one."""

Type of Resource

• text
• image

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/103700

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2019 Paul Michael Leonardo Atienza

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