An Architecture of Intimacy: How Technology Reimagines Intimacy and Relational Communication

This qualitative study explores how mobile media transforms our collective notion of intimacy and the rituals of connecting with others through communication. Using Bourdieu’s field theory and interpersonal communication frameworks of relational development and maintenance, this work answers three research questions: (1) What forms of intimacy are afforded by communication technologies that facilitate mobility? (2) How do individuals reimagine these forms of intimacy within their habitus of relational norms? (3) How do ambient, always-on, technologies enable individuals to create shared spaces? To answer these questions, I integrated semi-structured interviews with an adapted artifact analysis to investigate how people define intimacy and understand these practices in a mediated environment. In total, 86 interviews were conducted with people who were 19-67-year-olds between June and December 2020. Results reveal four primary forms of intimacy afforded by mobile communication technologies: experiential-intimacy, imprinted-intimacy, cerebral-intimacy, and mediated-physical-intimacy. Each of these illustrates different tiers of intimacy that are significant in mediated relationships and encouraged by mobile media. These forms of intimacy materialize through a person’s habitus of relational norms, or what this study refers to as the imagined habitus. The imagined habitus becomes an anchor for how intimacy is continuously and concurrently developed, preserved, and remixed through media. Overall, the results highlight how intimacy is fluid, something that is subjectively defined and experienced through different platforms as we try and give it shape. As we live in media, technology starts to bend the spatiotemporal boundaries of relational life. It is here where intimacy emerges, where it can be reimagined and reproduced between people as they communicate. Yes, intimacy is associated with closeness in a relationship. However, intimacy can also be best understood as a relational process conceptualized by types, experienced through different avenues that become a performance, and arise in new forms when we think about the place of technology in relationships. Depending on what tools we have at hand, who we are as individuals, our visions of intimacy, and our experiences in relationships now and in the past, we use technology in formulaic and new ways to build a space where intimacy can live.