CHAPTER


DOI :10.26650/B/SS07SS49.2023.009.05   IUP :10.26650/B/SS07SS49.2023.009.05    Full Text (PDF)

The Evolving Digital Dynamics of Intimacy: Affordances and Dating Apps

Fabian Broeker

This chapter maps the relational dynamic between new media and dating practices alongside and through a theoretical framework of affordances drawn from current scholarly debate. Affordances are cast as a versatile toolset used for investigations of new media without losing sight of the user within their polymedia environment. Dating apps offer a lens through which to observe the evolving dynamics of intimacy within the field of online dating, while also providing a canvas against which to assess the ways users shape and are shaped by the media they utilize. The affordances of dating apps distinguish them as ultimately different media to dating websites, while highlighting the necessity of removing arbitrary boundaries between online and offline social relations in scholarship. Noting the complex dynamic between technologies and the social and between media and society, this chapter casts media as objects of study that have been integrated into everyday life. Practices and rituals are enacted within everyday life and within specific cultural contexts by dating app users through their smartphones. Technologies have long mediated rituals of intimacy, and this chapter argues that dating apps do not alter social relations, but rather cater to enduring desires and practices within dating culture.



References

  • Abu-Lughod L. (2000). Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Oakland: University of California Press. google scholar
  • Albright, J. M., & Conran, T. (2003). Desire, Love, and Betrayal: Constructing and Deconstructing Intimacy Online. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 22(3), 42-53. google scholar
  • Albright, J. M., & Simmens, E. (2014). Flirting, cheating, dating, and mating in a virtual world. The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality., (December 2017), 284-302. google scholar
  • Bareither, C. (2019). Doing Emotion through Digital Media: An Ethnographic Perspective on Media Practices and Emotional Affordances. Ethnologia Europaea, 49(1). google scholar
  • Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid Love. Cambridge: Polity Press. google scholar
  • Bivens R., &Hoque A. S. (2018) Programming sex, gender, and sexuality: Infrastructural failures in the ‘feminist’ dating app Bumble. Canadian Journal of Communication 43(3), 441-459. DOI: 10.22230/ cjc.2018v43n3a3375. google scholar
  • Broeker, F. (2021). ‘We went from the anonymity of the internet into my private WhatsApp’: Rituals of transition among dating app users in Berlin. New Media and Society. DOI: 10.1177/14614448211029200. google scholar
  • Bucher, T., & Helmond, A. (2017). The Affordances of Social Media Platforms. In The SAGE Handbook of Social Media. Los Angeles: Sage. google scholar
  • Cabanes, J. V. A., & Collantes, C. F. (2020). Dating Apps as Digital Flyovers: Mobile Media and Global Intimacies in a Postcolonial City. In J. V. A. Cabanes & C. S. Uy-tioco (Eds.), MobileMedia andSocial Intimacies in Asia Reconfiguring Local Ties and Enacting Global Relationships. Dordrecht: Springer. google scholar
  • Chan, L. S. (2017). Who uses dating apps? Exploring the relationships among trust, sensation-seeking, smartphone use, and the intent to use dating apps based on the Integrative Model. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 246-258. google scholar
  • Costa, E. (2018). Affordances-in-practice: An ethnographic critique of social media logic and context collapse. New Media and Society, 20(10), 3641-3656. google scholar
  • Degim, I., Johnson, J., & Fu, T. (2015). Online Courtship: Interpersonal Interactions Across Borders. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. google scholar
  • Duguay, S. (2017). Dressing up Tinderella: interrogating authenticity claims on the mobile dating app Tinder. Information Communication and Society, 20(3), 351-367. google scholar
  • Duguay, S. (2018). Tinder Swiped: A Focal Gesture and Contested App Visions. In: Morris JW and Murray S (eds) Appified: Culture in the Age of Apps. Ann Arbor, UNITED STATES: University of Michigan Press. google scholar
  • Duguay, S. (2020). You can’t use this app for that: Exploring off-label use through an investigation of Tinder, Information Society, 36(1). Routledge: 30-42. DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2019.1685036. google scholar
  • Duguay, S., Burgess, J., & Light, B. (2017). Mobile Dating and Hookup App Culture. In P. Messaris & L. Humphreys (Eds.), Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication. New York: Peter Lang. google scholar
  • Faier, L. (2007). Filipina migrants in rural Japan and their professions of love. American Ethnologist, 34(1), 148-162. DOI: 10.1525/ae.2007.34.1.148. google scholar
  • Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3-66. google scholar
  • Gershon, I. (2010). The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over new media. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. google scholar
  • Gibbs, J. L., Ellison, N. B., & Heino, R. D. (2006). Self-Presentation in Online Personals. Communication Research, 33(2), 152-177. google scholar
  • Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. New York: Psychology Press. google scholar
  • Giddens, A. (1992). The Transformation of Intimacy Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies (1st ed..). Stanford: Stanford University Press. google scholar
  • Gillespie, T. (2015). Platforms Intervene. Social Media and Society, 1(1). DOI: 10.1177/2056305115580479. google scholar
  • Goggin, G. (2011). Ubiquitous apps: politics of openness in global mobile cultures. Digital Creativity, 22(3), 148-159. google scholar
  • Greer, A. E., & Buss, D. M. (1994). Tactics for Promoting Sexual Encounters. The Journal of Sex Research, 31(3), 185-201. google scholar
  • Handyside, S., & Ringrose, J. (2017). Snapchat memory and youth digital sexual cultures: mediated temporality, duration and affect. Journal of Gender Studies, 26(3), 347-360. google scholar
  • Hutchby, I. (2001). Technologies, Texts and Affordances. Sociology, 35(2), 441-456. google scholar
  • Illouz, E. (1997). Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. San Francisco: University of California Press. google scholar
  • Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Milton: Routledge. google scholar
  • Introna L. D. (2016). Algorithms, Governance, and Governmentality: On Governing Academic Writing. Science Technology and Human Values, 41(1), 17-49. DOI: 10.1177/0162243915587360. google scholar
  • Ito, M., Okabe, D., & Matsuda, M. (2005). Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: MIT Press. google scholar
  • Jackson, P. B., Kleiner, S., Geist, C., & Cebulko, K. (2011). Conventions of courtship: Gender and race differences in the significance of dating rituals. Journal of Family Issues, 32(5), 629-652. google scholar
  • Jamieson, L. (1998). Intimacy : Personal Relationships in Modern Societies. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity Press. google scholar
  • Krause, M., & Kowalski, A. (2013). Reflexive habits: Dating and rationalized conduct in New York and Berlin. Sociological Review, 61(1), 21-40. google scholar
  • Light, B., Burgess, J., & Duguay, S. (2018). The Walkthrough Method : An Approach to the Study of Mobile Apps. New Media and Society, 20(3). google scholar
  • Lutz, C. A. (1988). Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenges to Western Theory. Chicago: Chicago University Press. google scholar
  • Lynch, O. M. (1990). Divine Passions : The Social Construction of Emotion in India. Oakland: University of California Press. google scholar
  • MacKee, F. (2016). Social Media in Gay London Tinder as a Alternative to Hook-Up apps. Social Media and Society, 1(10). google scholar
  • MacLeod, C., & McArthur, V. (2019). The construction of gender in dating apps: an interface analysis of Tinder and Bumble. Feminist Media Studies, 19(6), 822-840. google scholar
  • Madianou, M. (2014). Smartphones as polymedia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(3), 667-680. google scholar
  • Madianou, M., & Miller, D. (2012). Migration and New Media : Transnational Families and Polymedia. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis. google scholar
  • McVeigh-Schultz, J., & Baym, N. K. (2015). Thinking of You: Vernacular Affordance in the Context of the Microsocial Relationship App, Couple. Social Media and Society, 1(2). google scholar
  • Mead, M. (1977). Sex and Temperament: In Three Primitive Societies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. google scholar
  • Miller, D. (2013). Future Identities : Changing identities in the UK — the next 10 years. Foresight. London. google scholar
  • Miller, D., Costa, E., Haynes, N., McDonald, T., Nicolescu, R., Sinanan, J., ... Wang, X. (2016). How The World Changed Social Media (Vol. 1). London: UCL Press. google scholar
  • Miller, D., Rabho, L. A., Awondo, P., et al. (2021). The Global Smartphone. London: UCL Press. google scholar
  • Morris, J. W., & Elkins, E. (2015). There’s a History for That: Apps and Mundane Software as Commodity. The Fibreculture Journal, (25), 63-88. google scholar
  • Pasquale, F. (2016). The Black Box Society : The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information. First Harv. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. google scholar
  • Peyton, T. (2014). Emotion to Action? Deconstructing the Ontological Politics of the “Like” Button. In T. Benski & E. Fisher (Eds.), Internet and emotions. New York: Routledge. google scholar
  • Portolan, L., & McAlister, J. (2021). Jagged Love : Narratives of Romance on Dating Apps during COVID-19. Sexuality & Culture 26. Springer US. google scholar
  • Rosaldo, M. Z. (1980). Knowledge and Passion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. google scholar
  • Rosamond, E. (2018). To sort, to match and to share: addressivity in online dating platforms. Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 10(3). Routledge: 32-42. DOI: 10.1080/20004214.2017.1400864. google scholar
  • Rose, S., & Frieze, I. H. (1989). Young singles’ scripts for a first date. Gender & Society, 3(2), 258-268. google scholar
  • Scheer, M. (2012). Are emotions a kind of practice (and is that what makes them have a history)? a bourdieuian approach to understanding emotion. History and Theory, 51(2), 193-220. google scholar
  • Silva, A. D. S. E. (2006). From cyber to hybrid: Mobile technologies as interfaces of hybrid spaces. Space and Culture, 9(3), 261-278. google scholar
  • Thompson, S. (1989). Search for Tomorrow: or Feminism and the Reconstruction of Teen Romance. In Pleasure and Danger, Exploring Female Sexuality. Boston: Routledge. google scholar
  • Veel, K., & Thylstrup, N. B. (2018). Geolocating the stranger: the mapping of uncertainty as a configuration of matching and warranting techniques in dating apps. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 10(3), 43-52. google scholar
  • Vincent, J., & Fortunati, L. (2009). Electronic Emotion: The Mediation of Emotion via Information and Communication Technologies. New York: Peter Lang. google scholar
  • Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2018). The Emotional Architecture of Social Media. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A Networked Self and Platforms, Stories, Connections. Milton: Taylor & Francis. google scholar
  • Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature. Marxist introductions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. google scholar
  • Wouters, C. (2004). Sex and Manners : Female Emancipation in the West 1890 - 2000. London: Sage Publications Ltd. google scholar
  • Wu, S. (2020). Domesticating dating apps: Non-single Chinese gay men’s dating app use and negotiations of relational boundaries. Media, culture & society, 43(3), 515-531. google scholar


SHARE




Istanbul University Press aims to contribute to the dissemination of ever growing scientific knowledge through publication of high quality scientific journals and books in accordance with the international publishing standards and ethics. Istanbul University Press follows an open access, non-commercial, scholarly publishing.