_I love you and I'm here for you__ Public Intimacy on Anonymous Digital Platforms.xlsx

Anonymous digital intimate publics (ADIPs) are digital platforms where anonymous posters share intimate stories. Because these platforms are anonymous, conventions such as user profiles, time stamps and ‘likes’ are not part of the site’s functionality. Nonetheless, intimate connections are shared and developed on these sites. Rather than an isolated occurrence, multiple platforms have emerged with similarities in the intimate connection and communication that takes place on ADIPS. This research uses Lauren Berlant’s <i>intimate publics</i> to build a conceptual framework which sees intimacy as a broad and often ephemeral occurrence which creates worlds and connects communities. Building on existing literature in the field of digital intimate publics, this research considers how anonymity and more-than-human actors contribute to the dynamics of ADIPs. This research compares similarities across three ADIPs: <i>Queering the Map</i>, <i>PostSecret</i>, and the City of Melbourne’s tree email program. By ascertaining the thematic similarities of the posts, further theoretical insights can be made about how ADIPs dissolve the artificial divide between public and private, reveal the capacity for intimacy-building in ephemeral and imagined circumstances, and ultimately demonstrate a repeated drive to challenge the current distant norms of contemporary Western intimacy.