Smartphone apps as cosituated closets: A lesbian app, public/private spaces, mobile intimacy, and collapsing contexts

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.