Session Chair: Stefanie Duguay
Presentation 1
Dating Apps, Emotions and Agency in Times of Emotional Capitalism
Łukasz Szulc
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Popular and scientific reports suggest that dating apps make their users sad. Research blames this on the commodification of love, sex, and intimacy, enhanced by digital technology. Dating apps are accused of giving a false sense of free choice between abundant potential partners and providing tools for atomizing people and filtering through them, while many caution against the growing dependency on dating apps. In this article, I draw on 30 interviews with Polish LGBTQs in the UK to challenge the conflation of dating apps with feeling sad by making a distinction between ‘sad dating apps’ and ‘sad dating app users.’ I demonstrate complex user agency in recognizing the flaws of platformized dating cultures and dealing with them creatively, advocating research that goes beyond relatively privileged users and global dating apps to better understand the role of digital technology in society and culture, especially at the intersection of emotions and agency.
Presentation 2
“TO BE QUEER, TO BE IN DATING APPS, TO BE QUEER IN DATING APPS”: THE ON-LIFE INDUSTRIOUSNESS OF CREATING STRATEGIES BEHIND STIGMAS AND FEARS OF ONLINE DATING OF ITALIAN AND AUSTRALIAN QUEER YOUNG ADULTS
Rachele Reschiglian(1), Brady Robards(2), Cosimo Marco Scarcelli(1)
1: University of Padova, Italy; 2: Monash University, Australia
The multifaced nature of online dating practices and experiences highlights both its empowering potential and the challenges it poses, including stigma and violence, particularly within the contexts of queer and LGBT+ communities and the subjectivities they contain. This paper aims to explore perceptions and responses to risks and fears in online dating experiences among queer young adults in Italy and Australia, utilising a qualitative approach through focus groups (15 in total, 8 in Italy and 7 in Australia). Initial findings from Italy reveal concerns about outing, appearance-based judgments, and hierarchies of intimacies, with participants employing various strategies for safety. Similar strategies for risk mitigation during offline encounters are observed across both contexts. As the analysis of Australian focus groups remains ongoing, anticipation mounts for further elucidation of the nuanced dynamics at play within this cultural setting. Overall, the study underscores the resilience and resourcefulness of queer individuals in navigating online dating complexities while emphasizing the need for safer and more inclusive digital spaces for these communities.
Presentation 3
Fatherhood on Dating Apps: A Norwegian Twist
Plata Sofie Diesen
Kristiania University College, Norway
In this study, I investigate the intricate realm of single fathers navigating the online dating landscape within Norway, when I ask the question: How do single dads in their mid-life adulthood present themselves as parents on dating apps in Norway? Employing a multifaceted research methodology comprising nethnography and autoethnography, I meticulously scrutinize how these fathers choose to divulge their parental status and romantic preferences through their dating app profiles, with a specifical focus on their self-presentation dynamics, re-partnering strategies, parental obligations, in context with cultural nuances. The insights gathered from this inquiry unveil a thoughtful approach adopted by these individuals, strategically accentuating their roles as fathers while also elucidating their priorities, logistical considerations, and compatibility criteria. By shedding light on these details, this study serves as a crucial exploration into the complexities that confront modern single parents navigating the terrain of dating apps. Furthermore, it offers valuable reflections on the shifting paradigms and evolving norms within contemporary relationships, underscoring the nuanced interplay between personal aspirations, parental responsibilities, and societal expectations in the context of romantic pursuits.
Presentation 4
‘IT’S A CANDY STORE. YOU CAN SEE THE CANDIES, BUT THE DOOR IS CLOSED.’ (NEURO)QUEERING THE HOOK-UP APP INDUSTRY IN NON-METROPOLITAN FINLAND.
Richard Eric Rawlings(1), Genavee Brown(1), Antu Sorainen(2), Lisa Thomas(1), Lynne Coventry(3)
1: Northumbria University, United Kingdom; 2: University of Helsinki, Finland; 3: Abertay University, United Kingdom
Industrial time and space produce marginalities and resistance: Queer time rejects linearity and potentiates alternate experiences (Halbertsam, 2005). Today, many experience phones or smartwatches as mediating temporal ruptures in daily lives (Mowlabocus, 2016), and hookup app industries monetise intimacies. Given permanent online connectivity, work and leisure are more porous than in a factory, yet corporate industries mediate marginal socialities. Industrious rural queers wrestle control of spatiotemporal intimacies from totalising platforms.
This study maps rural sexuality and hook-up app (dis)comfort and visualises whether hook-up contacts penetrate social networks. Seven semi-structured interviews took place in Finland. Three themes were determined: (in)visibility due to (fears of) marginalisation; categories and borders of app design inadequately reflecting indigenous/gendered, (neuro)queer, rural, linguistic, infrastructural and economic realities; and resisting spatiotemporal app logics.
History has shown the rise of industry as precariously subject to queer temporal forces lacking predictable directions, ultimately declining. Nonetheless, emergent digital industries, such as queer hookup apps, re-attempt to totalise expression via universal logic. They inadequately account for the cultural, linguistic, neurodiverse, gender diverse, disabled, indigenous and local contexts of queer lives beyond major cities, just as clock-time undermined working labourers while empowering colonial interests. We hope to demonstrate the ingenuity of users in questioning and queering social norms, with the hope of building improved digital queer social worlds that do not fetishise queer bodies as visible yet unreacable products for capitalist consumption but rather facilitate spatiotemporal possibilities that fulfil rural, queer, digital, and social needs.
