Media Love: Intimacy in Mediatized Worlds

Abstract

When we fall in love, we connect to the other person in multiple ways. Many of these connections involve media. We go to the cinema together or we watch television, listen to music or play a computer game; we increasingly have photographs in common; we compare (consciously and unconsciously) our relationship with those we see in literature, film and television; and when we are not together, we use various media technologies to close down the space between us. This use of media allows our connection to intensify, and it is this intensification that in part allows others and ourselves to recognize that we are in love.1 Although we call this Media Love,2 we certainly do not think that media have successfully colonized contemporary practices of romantic love. Many aspects of a romantic relationship do not involve a direct connection with media. Nonetheless, our research shows that contemporary romantic practice has become entangled in, and almost unthinkable without, media. There can be little doubt that people increasingly, and actively, use media as part of the architecture and choreography of a romantic relationship.