Study title

This project was undertaken by 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, we undertook in-depth qualitative interviews 43 queer men from two different locations in the UK - London and Edinburgh. The project explored how queer men in the UK used smartphones and digital technologies to mediate intimacy. This project data set includes 43 semi-structured qualitative interviews with gay and bisexual - or queer men - including cis (33) and trans (10) men based in London and Edinburgh. Interviews were undertaken online between July 2020 and January 2021, during the first year of the COVID pandemic in a period before vaccines were available. Topics covered include sexualities, relationships, intimacy, racism, transphobia, disability, vulnerability, COVID-19 mitigations, hook-up or dating apps, media and culture.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,...