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Public coupling: Imageries of domestic intimacy among social media microcelebrities

In Singapore, young couples who wish to apply for the heavily subsidized public housing, which accommodates over 80% of the national population, have to meet tight stipulations as regulated by the government. At the same time, predominantly female commercial lifestyle bloggers have increasingly been cast as role models among young people, given the extent of their influence over cohorts of Internet users on various social media platforms since 2005. This presentation draws together these two phenomena to investigate the emerging hyper-publicity of domestic intimacy between young couples as negotiated on social media. It investigates some of the early discourse and imageries staged, circulated, and contested in the life course of a romantic relationship including homemaking in third spaces, the materiality of love tokens, and the spectacle of dating milestones.

Abidin, C. (2015) “Public coupling: Imageries of domestic intimacy among social media microcelebrities” Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Melbourne. May 13, 2015.

Abidin, C. (2015) “Public coupling: Imageries of domestic intimacy among social media microcelebrities” Seminar Series, Mobile Life Center, Stockholm. Feb 25, 2015.

Abidin, C. (2015) “Make love, Make envy, Make money: Power-coupling on social media” Centre for Family Enterprise and Ownership (CeFEO), Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), Jönköping University, Jönköping. Apr 13, 2015.