Disclose Your HIV Status on Online Hookup Devices: The Materialization and Embodiment of Safe Sex.

In an attempt to make apps an environment for safe sex, lately smartphone app providers have incorporated HIV testing result as well as medicine for HIV care and prevention as users' profile options. Engaging the science, technology, and society (STS) scholarship, this paper proposes to turn to objects--an approach of considering the ways in which nonhuman factors evoke philosophical questions regarding technology, embodiment, and sexuality--to reflect upon such phenomenon. In particular, this paper addresses how safe sex is mediated and constructed on the smartphone app. Through analyzing the visual layout of two apps (i.e., Hornet and Scruff), this paper details how HIV disclosure, biomedicine, and app design intersect to yield two safe sex strategies--namely, the embodied and material safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]