ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how gay men use new media technologies and how these emergent media have, in turn, helped shape the contours of the gay community. By providing a historical overview of online spaces that have attracted gay audiences, it traces the changing uses of digital technologies including the Internet and social media apps to both challenge and recreate notions of gay community in the offline environment. While bisexuals, lesbian women, transgender individuals, intersexed individuals, the questioning and many other variants of 'sexual minorities' all have their own unique relationship with the Internet, the chapter specifically focuses on gay men because all of these histories and relationships while interrelated are, in fact, ultimately unique. Since 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has served as a private, not-for-profit organisation subcontracted by the US government that has managed most aspects of Internet governance.
