The ways absent ones make themselves present have been many. However, the material resources that support absent presence might be rapidly growing in number with the advent of the so-called`information society'. Mobile phones, e-mail, mobile messaging, to name a few, make for a changing technoscape. The aim of this paper is to understand how the transformation of this technoscape allows for the development of a particular pattern of construction of social relationships öthat of the`connected' management of relationships, in which the (physically) absent party renders himself or herself present by multiplying mediated communication gestures up to the point where copresent interactions and mediated communication seem woven in a seamless web. I will proceed in the first part of the paper by reviewing some of the current social research on the uses of communication technologies. Whereas research focusing on single mediated interactions has been quite sensitive to the way in which the material technologies that enable these interactions also shape them, this has been less the case for social-science research interested in social relationships either separately, or collectively within networks or larger relational systems. One of the reasons for this is that a relationship is usually conducted over a variety of mediated interactions and that, to understand how a given relationship might be shaped by communication technologies, one needs to take into account the way the management of a given relationship will rely on the whole available technoscape. This is the aim of the second part of the paper. By bringing together three studies, on the use of the landline telephone, the mobile phone, and mobile text messaging, I want to provide evidence of a gradual shift in which communication technologies, instead of being used (however unsuccessfully) tò

One pervasive use of the Grindr mobile application is the initiation and accomplishment of pseudonymous sexual encounters between gay strangers based on location awareness. Not only are such encounters oriented towards quasi-immediate sexual gratification, but they are collaboratively done so as to preclude repeat encounters and relational development, with the protagonists supposedly left unaffected emotionally, relationally and socially by their meeting. This creates a rather special – and analytically interesting – interactional dilemma when Grindr users initiate a social contact with potential partners, usually through the chat function integrated into the mobile app. This article describes the way Grindr users have developed a particular ‘linguistic ideology’, which casts ordinary conversation as an interactional activity that is performed between (potential) friends and enables relational development. As such, it is unsuitable for one-time sexual encounters, the production of which is a distinctive and accountable interactional accomplishment. This article analyzes the special interactional practices based on profile-matching sequences which Grindr users have developed to circumvent the relational affordances of electronic conversation. These practices constitute Grindr users as a particular form of speech community, adjusted both to their orientation towards initiating ‘purely’ sexual encounters and to the socio-material design of the Grindr mobile application.

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