Call for papers

The digital space is gradually contributing to shaping the concept of intimacy, transforming what was once considered the exclusive domain of the private sphere into a continuous flow of data, desires, and connections. From social media to dating apps, from digital tools for self-expression to algorithmic imaginaries, intimate relationships are constantly redefined in the digital environment in increasingly complex and multifaceted ways. For young people, digital media has become an essential part of their everyday lives, as they are the fastest group in taking up, transforming and abandoning new technologies. In their daily media practices, young people establish, maintain, and perform relationships while negotiating the need for privacy with the desire for visibility. Digital platforms act as affective architectures, creating new marketplaces where emotions, identities, and relationships are continuously profiled and monetized.

As Laurent Berlant (1998) noted, these “contradictory desires” are intrinsic to the intimacy of daily life. By welcoming the ambiguities and paradoxes of intimacy, connection and identity, the field of digital intimacies contends with the constant interplay between public and private in everyday life. How is intimacy experienced in a context where everything seems mediated through algorithms and regimes of visibility? What new forms of affection, sexuality, and bonds emerge in the digital daily lives of young people, and what risks do these transformations entail? How do young people draw on, negotiate and transform representations and models of intimate relationships?

This conference invites researchers to investigate the multiple ways in which young people interact with, negotiate, and reinvent intimacy in a progressively digitalized world. Intimacy is not limited to romantic or sexual relationships, but includes a broader spectrum of dimensions, such as friendships, family bonds, personal identity, and emotional well-being. We welcome approaches that move beyond and challenge heteronormative, Western-centric notions of intimacy, inviting broader and more inclusive conceptualizations.

The goal of the conference is to create a critical discussion space to reflect on the opportunities, challenges, and contradictions inherent in digital intimacies, exploring its intersections with the social, cultural, and technological dimensions of daily life. While the digital offers new possibilities for connections, self-expression, and identity construction, it simultaneously raises questions about privacy, surveillance, commodification, and inequalities.

While the main focus of the conference lies within media, cultural, and gender studies—particularly concerning young people, digital intimacies, and everyday life—interdisciplinary perspectives are welcome.

We invite presentations on the following topics, but not limited to:

• Dating, relationships, and intimate connections
• Sexual expressions and practices, including sexting and pornography
• Gender identities, performances and representations
• LGBTQIA+ activism and communities
• Intersectional perspectives on digital intimacies
• Friendship and networks of care
• Constant connection and digital disconnection in interpersonal communication
• Bodies, health, and sex education
• Online and offline abuse in intimate relationships
• Datification and commodification of intimacy
• Platforms, algorithms, and digital monitoring, including intimate partner surveillance and location tracking
• Intimate citizenship and rights
• Methodological and ethical challenges in doing research with young people and digital intimacies