In the world of social media and online dating Tinder occupies a liminal space. It is part social media app, part dating site. On Tinder, you are presented with images of other users who are within a geographic distance that you set. When you see a picture you like, you swipe right, with someone you don’t like, you swipe left. If you swipe right on someone who swiped right for your picture you are “matched” and are then able to communicate via a messaging system in the app leading to the possibility of face-to-face meetings.
On their website Tinder boasts 1.6 billion swipes and 26 million matches every day. Yet searches of multiple databases show that not a single piece of academic research examining Tinder has been published. This research aims to fill that gap. We used an online survey to collect a mix of quantitative and qualitative data from Tinder users to explore (a) how they use the app, (b) their perceptions of it, and (c) their perceptions of other Tinder users.
The survey asks about why they first started using Tinder, how often they use it, and whether their experience has been positive or negative. In closed-ended question we asked respondents questions about their perceptions of user motivation. A series of open-ended questions gave respondents the opportunity to share stories about their experiences to add some depth to the quantitative data.
An early version of Tinder’s website presented a meat market, hook-up app. More recently Tinder has shifted this image to present users the prospect of romance and long-term love. This research examines whether users perceive their experiences, and the motivations of others, as matching the latter or the former, and fills an important gap in social media research that has not yet explored Tinder.
About the presenterRobert N. Spicer
Robert N. Spicer earned his doctorate from the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers University and is an assistant professor of digital journalism at Millersville University. His dissertation, “The discourses and practices of political deception” is a discourse analysis of deception in politics. Spicer is currently working on a book on political deception and the law for Palsgrave. He also has a forthcoming chapter that will be published in the book Phenomenology and Media.