dc.contributor.author | Wessman, Freja | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2022-07-05T06:58:11Z | |
dc.date.available | 2022-07-05T06:58:11Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2022-07-05 | |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/2077/72639 | |
dc.description.abstract | In the last few years, a new social phenomenon has been the making of friends through
friendship apps. This is largely unexplored in research, with the potential to change the ways
friendships are understood and formed. Women's experience of using friendship apps is
explored by critically investigating Gidden's (1991) concept of the growth of pure
relationships in late modernity, where relationships become free from external social
structures. With the purpose of understanding how technological and social structures relate
to friendship making today. The largest friendship app in Sweden GoFrendly which is only
available for women was selected as a case to study. The material consists of 12 interviews
with women who have experience using the app. By applying theories of pure relationships,
algorithmic friendship, and platonic love, making friends through apps is understood as a
process of emotional and practical friendship work. This includes being reflexive while
navigating different uncertainties. By engaging in friend dating and self-disclosure to build
intimacy a proliferation of pure relationships appears possible for women through friendship
apps. However, the process also points to several forms of impurity, where gendered
friendships increase and technology aids in creating artificial environments of homophily. In
this way app friendships are anchored in several social structures rather than being free
floating, and women mainly befriend those similar to themselves. | en |
dc.language.iso | eng | en |
dc.subject | Friendship apps, Friendship work, Pure relationship, Gendered friendship, Homophily | en |
dc.title | Uncertain Intimacies: App-based friendship among women | en |
dc.type | Text | |
dc.setspec.uppsok | SovialBehaviourLaw | |
dc.type.uppsok | M2 | |
dc.contributor.department | University of Gothenburg / Department of Sociology and Work Science | eng |
dc.contributor.department | Göteborgs universitet / Institutionen för sociologi och arbetsvetenskap | swe |
dc.type.degree | Student essay | |