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Chapter 6 – the Trouble with Tinder: the Ethical Complexities of Researching Location-Aware Social Discovery Apps

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Chapter 6 – the Trouble with Tinder: the Ethical Complexities of Researching Location-Aware Social Discovery Apps Draft only. Final chapter available on publishers website: www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/S2398- 601820180000002006 Please cite and reference the published version: Condie, J., Lean, G. and Wilcockson, B. 2017. The Trouble with Tinder: The Ethical Complexities of Researching Location-Aware Social Discovery Apps, in The Ethics of Online Research (Advances in Research Ethics and Integrity, Volume 2), edited by K. Woodfield. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, 135–158. Chapter 6 – The Trouble with Tinder: The Ethical Complexities of Researching Location-Aware Social Discovery Apps Jenna Condie, Garth Lean and Brittany Wilcockson Abstract This chapter explores the ethical complexities of researching location-aware social discovery Smartphone applications (apps) and how they mediate contemporary experiences of travel. We highlight the context-specific approach required to carrying out research on Tinder, a location-aware app that enables people to connect with others in close proximity to them. By journeying through the early stages of our research project, we demonstrate how ethical considerations and dilemmas began long before our project became a project. We discuss the pulls toward data extraction/mining of user-generated content (i.e., Tinder user profiles) within digital social research and the ethical challenges of using this data for research purposes. We focus particularly on issues of informed consent, privacy, and copyright, and the differences between manual and automated data mining/extraction techniques. Excerpts from our university ethics application are included to demonstrate how our research sits uneasily within standardized ethical protocols. Our moves away from a “big data” approach to more “traditional” and participatory methodologies are located within questions of epistemology and ontology including our commitment to practicing a feminist research ethic. Our chapter concludes with the lessons learned in the aim to push forward with research in challenging online spaces and with new data sources. Keywords: Big data; apps; Smartphone applications; user-generated content; feminist research; data extraction Introduction As digital technologies and new media platforms rapidly emerge, academics rush to research them, ourselves included. The huge volumes of data generated by our everyday digital activities represent opportunities for researchers across many disciplines in the quest for knowledge production and impact. In this chapter, we critically reflect upon the methodological decisions made in designing a research project to explore how location- aware social discovery smartphone applications (apps) mediate contemporary travel experiences. We focus specifically on Tinder, a location-aware smartphone application (app), marketed as a social discovery app that “empowers users around the world to create new connections that otherwise might never have been possible” (Tinder, 2016a). Tinder is primarily known and used as a dating site where people swipe through profiles of other users in close proximity to them. Given Tinder’s prominence and its market positioning for use while travelling (including its recent “Passport” feature that enables users to change locations ahead of travelling to a destination), it offers an appropriate research context for understanding how location-aware technologies mediate contemporary travel experiences. When we first started talking about our Tinder research to colleagues and peers, some found it trivial and perhaps not worthy of serious study. Admittedly, we are perhaps caught up in the rush to research the trending and the popular, but we also “take Tinder’s silliness seriously” (Mason, 2016, p. 4). Tinder has been widely framed within popular discourses as a “hook up” app designed to facilitate casual sexual encounters, contributing to a supposed “dating apocalypse” (Sales, 2015). Yet at the same time, “hook up” apps have become more commonplace and normalized, so much so that they now mean much more than a “hook up” app (Hsiao & Dillahunt, 2017; MacKee, 2016; Mason, 2016; Sumter, Vandenbosch, & Ligtenberg, 2017). The varied motivations for use such as finding casual and romantic partners, making new friendships, and for entertainment purposes (Sumter et al., 2017), inform our adoption of the broader term “social discovery” to refer to Tinder and apps that enable new social connections based on locational information. From exploring how newcomers to an area gain social capital (Hsiao & Dillahunt, 2017) to understanding how Tinder functions as a serious relationship app for gay men (MacKee, 2016), “social discovery” apps now mediate many everyday, ordinary social connections, and can therefore indicate the future of our mobile (location-aware) communications (de Souza e Silva, 2013). Our journey through the stages of the research project and the ethical decisions and pivots along the way reflect our changing epistemological and ontological positions as to how to carry out such research and how we understand our topic of inquiry. In theorizing Tinder as a social space and a data source, we demonstrate how user-generated content as data slots uneasily into the standardized ethical protocols to which university research boards and professional research organizations require adherence. We include an analysis of our university ethics application for this research project and the subsequent amendments submitted as our ethical approach toward the research evolved. This enables us to identify the constraints of University ethics panels on creative and alternative practices across new digital terrains. We conclude with our commitment to a feminist research ethic to ensure that the research we carry out attends to, and addresses, the inequalities of the web. A final aim of this chapter is to offer practical solutions for researchers to push forward with research in challenging online spaces and new data sources. When Research Ideas Originate from Personal Experiences The idea to explore how people use location-aware digital technologies while travelling originates from personal experiences. New to Australia and the online dating scene, I (Jenna) ventured onto the Tinder platform, set up a profile, and started “swiping right” on other users’ profiles. The popular dating app is gamified and encourages you to “keep playing.” I did. When other users also “swipe right” on your profile, there is a “match,” which enables private messaging so you can then chat directly. When using Tinder, I inevitably considered the social interactions it makes possible through the lens of a researcher interested in social media and identity. I noticed the conventions around how people present themselves on the platform through a combination of visual images and written text, and I quickly learned the protocols for avoiding unwanted sexual advances and unpleasant interactions. I also noticed that many of the people using the app were travelling for various purposes such as work, leisure, holidays, and backpacking. This was largely due to my location in the popular travel destination of Sydney in New South Wales. Tinder gave me a useful insight not only into who resides in my new city but also who is travelling through it from elsewhere. I was amazed at how far and wide they said they came from. What are they doing here? Who do they want to encounter as they go? How do they use place to portray who they are to others, their online identities? I discussed the use of Tinder for travel with Garth who researches travel and mobilities1 and the idea to explore “Tinder tourism” or “Tinder travel” took form. I (Garth) was initially reluctant to engage in the research topic. While my knowledge of Tinder was limited, everything I had read had portrayed it in a negative light: a casual sex app jeopardizing the future of “traditional” relationships. Unlike Jenna, I was not a part of social circles using these apps. After persistence from Jenna, we eventually met to discuss project ideas. An Internet search during the meeting revealed the breadth of the phenomenon: we quickly discovered a plethora of blogs and media detailing the exploits of “Tinder Tourists.” We were convinced that Tinder was a topic that warranted further enquiry, so we devised a plan to apply for an internal research grant from our department. Prior to formally launching our project, Jenna urged me to join Tinder and similar apps so I could get an idea of how they worked and how travellers were using them in Sydney. At first, I was quite anxious about this. I had taught thousands of students at Western Sydney University. If not by a student, I had visions of being discovered on what I still conceptualized as a “hook-up” app by colleagues or friends. As such, I initially set up a photo-less fake profile. However, it did not take long to dispel the taboos of Tinder that I had imagined. Once I saw that people were on there for a range of intentions, I set up a new profile with my real details albeit with a direct caveat that I was on Tinder for the purposes of research (which I also felt necessary in terms of ethical practices). Indeed, it was seeing the profile of colleagues and a former student that helped to normalize being on the app. My (Garth) research methods often incorporate autoethnography, and it was important for me to get a sense of how the applications worked and the types of interactions had. In the early stages of the research, I added myself to Tinder and several other location-aware social discovery smartphone apps: Bumble, Happn, and Backpackr. This was enabled more easily by being single at the time and not having to explain this reasoning to a significant other. Ethical considerations raised their head periodically. For instance, one woman’s first communication with me on Bumble was “I am so ready to be used for academic purposes.” I signed up for “Tinder Plus,” a paid service that allowed me to change my geographic locations on the app to anywhere around the world. As a geographer and travel researcher (and “travel addict”), the app became a form of travel in itself.
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