Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Although various forms of matchmaking have always been around, a massive shift in dating culture happened in 2013, when Tinder expanded from the iPhone to Android phones, then to more than 70 percent of smartphones worldwide. Mobile dating applications have increased in popularity in recent years, and transformed the ways in which people interact, perceive identity, and form relationships. The most important thing dating apps deliver is not a relationship, but the sense that there’s an ocean of easily-accessible singles you can dip a ladle into whenever you want, which is likely to lower the meaning of prospective interaction. Starting off of this premise, we were interested in exploring how users conceptualise their online dating experiences. In our research conducted at the American College of Thessaloniki, we particularly focus on: (i) understandings of self-presentational practices, (ii) shared expectations that are relied upon during mediated communication, and (iii) how these reproduce or challenge gendered offline expectations. Drawing from semi structured interviews with undergraduate students, we aim to uncover contradictions and inconsistencies that surface in participants’ discourses, which manifest in the distance between proclaimed goals, perceptions and ideas, and the more sedimented views that reflect deeply rooted gender norms and beliefs about sexuality and romance. We also consider the impact of the medium (dating apps and smartphones) from the perspective of actor-network theory.