Gay Data

Since its launch in 2009, the geosocial networking service Grindr has become an increasingly mainstream and prominent part of gay culture, both in the United States and globally. Mobile applications like Grindr give users the ability to quickly and easily share information about themselves (in the form of text, numbers, and pictures), and connect with each other in real time on the basis of geographic proximity. I argue that these services constitute an important site for examining how bodies, identities, and communities are translated into data, as well as how data becomes a tool for forming, understanding, and managing personal relationships. Throughout this work, I articulate a model of networked interactivity that conceptualizes self-expression as an act determined by three sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting sets of affordances and constraints: (1) technocommercial structures of software and business; (2) cultural and subcultural norms, mores, histories, and standards of acceptable and expected conduct; and (3) sociopolitical tendencies that appear to be (but in fact are not) fixed technocommercial structures. In these discussions, Grindr serves both as a model of processes that apply to social networking more generally, as well as a particular study into how networked interactivity is complicated by the histories and particularities of Western gay culture. Over the course of this dissertation, I suggest ways in which users, policymakers, and developers can productively recognize the liveness, vitality, and durability of personal information in the design, implementation, and use of gay-targeted social networking services. Specifically, I argue that through a focus on (1) open-ended structures of interface design, (2) clear and transparent articulations of service policies, and the rationales behind them, and (3) approaches to user information that promote data sovereignty, designers, developers, and advocates can work to make social networking services, including Grindr, safer and more representative of their users throughout their data’s lifecycle

“NO OVERLY SUGGESTIVE PHOTOS OF ANY KIND”: TECHNICS AND NORMATIVITY IN SOCIAL NETWORK CONTENT MANAGEMENT POLICIES

This article examines the policies and practices that manage user-submitted content on three gay- targeted social networking services. While managing user-generated content is a common practice across social networking services, the policies implemented on gay-targeted services tend to be distinctively restrictive in scope and highly specific in formulation. This analysis identifies the technical, legal, and social affordances that authorized the creation of these policies. Framing content management policies as derived from the technical rules of platforms like Apple’s App Store obscures normative judgements about proper self-presentation and community formation. Identifying the normative character of these policies requires an analysis rooted simultaneously in technology studies, media policy, and subcultural identity politics

Association Free Energy of Dipalmitoylphosphatidylserines in a Mixed Dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine Membrane

Blood coagulation is strongly dependent on the binding of vitamin K-dependent proteins to cell membranes containing phosphatidylserine (PS) via γ-carboxyglutamic acid (Gla) domains. The process depends on calcium, which can induce nonideal behavior in membranes through domain formation. Such domain separation mediated by Ca(2+) ions or proteins can have an important contribution to the thermodynamics of the interaction between charged peripheral proteins and oppositely charged membranes. To characterize the properties of lipid-lipid interactions, molecular dynamics, and free energy simulations in a mixed bilayer membrane containing dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine and dipalmitoylphosphatidylserine were carried out. The free energy of association between dipalmitoylphosphatidylserines in the environment of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholines has been calculated by using a novel approach to the dual topology technique of the PS-PC hybrid. Two different methods, free energy perturbation and thermodynamic integration, were used to calculate the free energy difference. In thermodynamic integration runs three schemes were applied to evaluate the integral at the limits of λ → 0 or λ → 1. Our studies show that the association of two PSs in the environment of PCs is repulsive in the absence of Ca(2+) and becomes favorable in their presence. We also show that the mixed component membrane should exhibit nonideal behavior that will lead to PS clustering