Layers of Marginality: An Exploration of Visibility, Impressions, and Cultural Context on Geospatial Apps for Men Who Have Sex With Men in Mumbai, India

Abstract

Some social technologies can reduce marginality by enabling access to individuals and resources through increased visibility and opportunities for social connection, but visibility carries risks that may be outsized for some marginalized populations. This article reports on a study of location-based social apps (LBSA) used by men who have sex with men (MSM) in Mumbai, India, a legally and socially marginalized population. LBSAs, which facilitate interaction and social connection between physically proximate individuals would seem at first to be a valuable resource in reducing marginality for MSM by connecting otherwise isolated individuals with each other. We explored this from a socio-technical perspective through a qualitative study of MSM in Mumbai, India, who use LBSAs. Results suggest that, as in other contexts, using LBSAs presented formidable risks and challenges such as information security and identification by others, but also could serve as a valuable resource for connecting MSM to each other.

Introduction: Marginality and Social Media

“…Every article in this collection focuses on a population that is significantly under-represented in scholarly research more generally. Populations of study include people of color (Davis, this issue; Smith et al, this issue), refugees (Udwan et al, this issue), LGBTQ + people (Birnholtz et al, this issue), people with disabilities (Trevisan, this issue), indigenous people (Carlson & Frazer, this issue; Lupien, this issue; Richez et al, this issue), and people from the Global South (Birnholtz et al, this issue; Soriano & Cabañes, this issue). Although social media have many limitations (centralized corporate control, limited reach to some parts of the world, and financial barriers to entry, to name just a few), the possibility to expand populations of study through techniques like observation, asynchronous participation, and flexible interview scheduling was embraced by most in this collection.…”

“…In this special issue, it is notable that the majority of manuscripts employ qualitative methods, including interviews (Birnholtz et al, this issue; Carlson & Frazer, this issue; Lupien, this issue; Soriano & Cabañes, this issue; Udwan et al, this issue; focus groups [Trevisan, this issue], and discourse analysis [Davis, this issue]). Qualitative methods have long been the dominant method used in the study of marginalized groups (Barron, 1999), partially because of the nature of questions of marginality as well as the possibility of elevating voices of the marginalized.…”

“…How, for example, can knowledge gained from the relationship (or lack thereof) between social media campaigns and policy change alter the course of future campaigns (see Richez et al, this issue)? How can knowledge of location-aware systems inform future design for individuals from marginalized communities (see Birnholtz et al, this issue)? Indeed, nearly all of the articles included in this special issue offer clear and specific insights for the populations under investigation.…”

“…Similarly, Jackson et al (2020) acknowledge how the additional labor of organizing and labeling social media posts that enables research can also enable unwanted state surveillance, especially when ordinary people transcend their usual spheres of influence and attention (e.g., by tweeting during a protest). In this collection, a number of researchers note special precautions they took to de-identify and/or not collect personally identifiable information to protect participants from marginalized communities whose identities, orientations, and/or behavior are locally stigmatized and criminalized (e.g., Birnholtz et al, this issue; Udwan et al, this issue).…”

Let’s (not) Go Outside: Grindr, Hybrid Space, and Digital Queer Neighborhoods

“…Same-sex partner-seeking platforms, of which Grindr is the (in)famous market leader with users in 234 countries worldwide (Grindr 2020), have enjoyed particularly high adoption by gay, bisexual, and other men who seek sex with men. Membership of these platforms has become the norm not just throughout wealthy cities in North America and Europe, but also surprisingly widely around the world, including within sociopolitical cultures popularly perceived to be sexually conservative (Dasgupta 2017;Miao and Chan 2020) and economically marginalized settings in the global South (Birnholtz et al 2020;Bryan 2019). This rapid and widespread shift to online, smartphone-enabled partner-seeking generates significant implications for offline gay neighborhoods, compounded by the economic impact of the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic on what are, in many cities, already struggling queer commercial and community venues.…”