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Dating, Digital Media, and Diaspora: Contextualising the Cultural Uses of Tinder and Tantan Among Australian Chinese Diasporas

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Dating, Digital Media, and Diaspora: Contextualising the Cultural Uses of Tinder and Tantan Among Australian Chinese Diasporas DATING, DIGITAL MEDIA, AND DIASPORA: CONTEXTUALISING THE CULTURAL USES OF TINDER AND TANTAN AMONG AUSTRALIAN CHINESE DIASPORAS Xu Chen BA, MA Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Communication Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology 2020 Keywords Chinese diasporas Dating apps Digital cultures Ethnicity Sexual cultures Social media Dating, digital media, and diaspora: Contextualising the cultural uses of Tinder and Tantan among Australian Chinese diasporas i Abstract Bringing together perspectives from digital dating, sexual cultures, and diaspora studies, this project investigates how Australia-based Chinese users engage with Tinder and Tantan, two dating applications (apps) that have emerged from different cultural contexts – one Western, and one non-Western. Tantan is a popular dating app in mainland China. It was designed to mimic Tinder which, like other Western social media platforms, is blocked in mainland China. Although the study of dating apps has become a burgeoning research field over the past decade, little work has been done – and then only recently – on diasporic uses of dating apps. Research focusing on digital diaspora has shown that social media are essential to the maintenance and negotiation of diasporic identity among Australian Chinese diasporas. Within this digital-diasporic research, however, little attention has been paid to the role of dating apps, despite the popularity of both Chinese and Western dating apps among Chinese diasporic communities. To address this lack of attention, this research places a much-needed focus on the role of dating apps within digital diaspora studies. At the same time, it expands the emerging critical focus on diaspora within dating app studies. This research employs mixed research methods. These include the walkthrough method (Light, Burgess, & Duguay, 2018) for app analysis, and interviews with 23 Australian-based Chinese users of Tinder and/or Tantan. Findings reveal that with very similar digital architectures, Tinder and Tantan apps have promoted two different sets of normativities that align with Western and Chinese internet cultures respectively. Such normativities contribute to the formation of digital cultures on Tinder and Tantan in Australia. For example, interview participants perceived that Tinder users are predominantly white, with “Western-style” profiles (e.g., exhibiting the cultural practices of using real names, and the presentation of real photos); Tantan users, on the other hand, are predominantly Chinese, with “Chinese-style” profiles (e.g., exhibiting the cultural practices of using aliases, and including an abundance of beautified photos). iiDating, digital media, and diaspora: Contextualising the cultural uses of Tinder and Tantan among Australian Chinese diasporas While the contrast between Chinese and Western profiles seemed to be sharp and clear, there were also Chinese users who had constructed Western-style profiles on Tinder or Tantan. This was illustrated by participants’ descriptions of profiles they encountered, as well as by some of their own profiles, several of which used a Western style. This implies the blurring of the boundaries between “Chinese” and “Western” profiles on Tinder and Tantan. Moreover, participants’ identity negotiation processes in Australia correlated with their interpretations and appropriations of Tinder and Tantan. Their diasporic processes in Australia create an identity-based boundary that forms at the intersection of race, sexuality, gender, nationalism, and other identities. This boundary is located across the spectrum of being Chinese- or Western-centric, and projects into participants’ willingness to date “foreigners” (in most cases, this refers to white people) or not. While participants were aware of Orientalist portrayals of Chinese sexuality with gendered variations, and reported risks of being marginalised on Tinder, their willingness to date “foreigners” differed according to gendered Occidentalist notions of white sexuality. While participants acknowledged their multicultural lives in Australia, they made a clear distinction between racial and ethnic markers in their digital dating experiences. I argue that such distinction is largely shaped by the predominance of cultural essentialism both in China and the West. This cultural essentialism is embodied in the Occidentalist portrayals of white sexuality and the Orientalist portrayals of Chinese sexuality in both societies, and is facilitated by the affordances of the Tinder and Tantan apps. Through the prism of the dating app cultures of Australian Chinese diasporas, this research offers a lens through which to examine the entanglement of digital technologies, races, sexual cultures, and diasporic identifications. Therefore, it expands our understandings of dating app usage in non-Western contexts. It also broadens the scope of the study of the media use of Chinese diasporas in Australia. Dating, digital media, and diaspora: Contextualising the cultural uses of Tinder and Tantan among Australian Chinese diasporas iii Table of Contents Keywords ......................................................................................................................................... i Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ viii Statement of Original Authorship .................................................................................................. ix Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... x Previously Published Content ....................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................... 13 1.1 Context and Scope ................................................................................................................... 17 1.2 Research Question ................................................................................................................... 25 1.3 Research Significance ............................................................................................................. 26 1.4 Research Design ...................................................................................................................... 29 1.4.1 Walkthrough .................................................................................................................................. 30 1.4.2 Interview ........................................................................................................................................ 32 1.5 Thesis Outline ......................................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 2: Literature Review .......................................................................................... 41 2.1 Chinese dating and sexual cultures in transition ..................................................................... 42 2.1.1 The tradition of arranged marriages in China .............................................................................. 42 2.1.2 Modernisation and the transformation of intimacy ....................................................................... 45 2.1.3 Continuities of patriarchy and the emerging Chinese female subjectivities .................................. 48 2.2 Digitally mediated intimacy .................................................................................................... 51 2.2.1 Digitally mediated intimacy and affordances ................................................................................ 51 2.2.2 Mediated intimacy and underlying ideologies in social media ...................................................... 56 2.3 Orientalist and Occidentalist fantasies .................................................................................... 63 2.3.1 Ethnosexuality and ethnosexual boundaries .................................................................................. 63 2.3.2 Orientalism and the marginalisation of Chinese sexuality in the West ......................................... 66 2.3.3 Occidentalism and stereotypes of white sexuality in China ........................................................... 68 2.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 72 Chapter 3: Walkthrough .................................................................................................. 73 3.1 The walkthrough method ......................................................................................................... 73 ivDating, digital media, and diaspora: Contextualising the cultural uses of Tinder and Tantan among Australian Chinese diasporas 3.2 Environment of expected use .................................................................................................
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