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Dating Apps and Data Markets: a Political Economy of Communication Ap- Proach This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Wilken, Rowan, Burgess, Jean, & Albury, Kath (2019) Dating apps and data markets: A political economy of communication ap- proach. Computational Culture, 7, pp. 1-26. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/133755/ c 2019 The Authors This work is covered by copyright. Unless the document is being made available under a Creative Commons Licence, you must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses. If the docu- ment is available under a Creative Commons License (or other specified license) then refer to the Licence for details of permitted re-use. It is a condition of access that users recog- nise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. If you believe that this work infringes copyright please provide details by email to [email protected] License: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 Notice: Please note that this document may not be the Version of Record (i.e. published version) of the work. Author manuscript versions (as Sub- mitted for peer review or as Accepted for publication after peer review) can be identified by an absence of publisher branding and/or typeset appear- ance. If there is any doubt, please refer to the published source. http:// computationalculture.net/ dating-apps-and-data-markets-a-political-economy-of-communication-approach/ Computational Culture a journal of software studies Dating Apps and Data Markets: A Political Economy of Communication Approach ARTICLE INFORMATION Author(s): Rowan Wilken, Jean Burgess, and Kath Albury Affiliation(s): School of Media and Communication, RMIT University; Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), Queensland University of Technology (QUT); Swinburne University of Technology Publication Date: 21st October 2019 Issue: 7 Citation: Rowan Wilken, Jean Burgess, and Kath Albury. “Dating Apps and Data Markets: A Political Economy of Communication Approach.” Computational Culture 7 (21st October 2019). http://computationalculture.net/dating-apps-and-data-markets-a-political-economy-of-communication- approach/. ABSTRACT Dating apps, due to their proliferation and international popularity, have become key aggregators of intimate personal data. And yet we still know remarkably little about the corporate structures behind these apps, how economic value is attributed to and extracted from dating app data, and how these data are monetised. In this article, we apply a political economy of communication approach to dating apps, and examine three cases. These are: Grindr, which is presently fully owned by Chinese gaming and internet services firm Kunlun; Match Group, a publicly listed company (whose controlling shareholder is the Texas- based IAC/InterActiveCorp holding company) that owns Tinder, along with a diverse array of other dating apps and sites across 42 languages and 190 countries; and, Bumble, the start-up behind the dating app where women initiate first contact, and which has been subject to repeated acquisition attempts by Match Group. When applied to dating apps, a political economy approach directs our attention to the different stakeholders involved with controlling and commercialising applications for web-based and mobile devices, and, increasingly, the data that is generated through them. In this article, we ask: What are the financial arrangements, business models, and cross-platform and other data-sharing deals that make dating apps so lucrative? Understanding these issues is vital if we are to make sense of the data markets that form around dating apps, and the implications of the monetisation of and trade in such highly sensitive personal data. We conclude the article by reflecting on the limits of the political economy of communication approach for the study of dating apps, and how this approach can be usefully integrated with app and software studies more generally. Introduction Numerous and widely used, dating apps collect and connect detailed personal data across platforms. They have therefore been responsible for integrating intensive modes of personal data collection and computational decision-making into intimate social life, and, in parallel, for integrating these personal and intimate modes of communication into the platform-dominated digital media environment’s logics and economies of datafication.1 There is an expanding body of work detailing how people are engaging with dating apps and their various cultures of use, including how various aspects of identity, culture and sexual practice are enabled and constrained by the affordances and architectures of apps.2 Methods developed for the critical study of apps in the software studies and platform studies tradition have focused on tracing the relationships between design logics and their sociocultural implications, in effect forming ‘close readings’ of apps’ material features, and drawing inferences from these close readings and a range of background research materials about business models, for example.3 Such work, within the critical digital media and software studies traditions, looks at software, computation, and interfaces, applying approaches that examine these issues in dating apps studies, including work on platform governance.4 Some studies of dating apps have also addressed aspects of the present article’s questions about how dating apps interact with and participate in data markets – that is, processes of data aggregation, valuation, commodification, and exchange. Stehling et al. approach dating apps as one of many digital platforms through which user data can be co-opted and commodified.5 Gay men’s dating app data, in particular, have been framed as a potential tool for public health organisations, offering opportunities for targeted health promotion and population surveillance in the Asia-Pacific and North America.6 David and Cambre, Wang, and Light have documented and interrogated the ways that app users internationally have sought to ‘game’ the ‘data-structured and algorithmic’ aspects of app culture.7 In addition, app-users directly engage with data markets via the legitimate deployment of in-app algorithmic affordances for ranking and filtering user profiles, and by means of ‘off-label’ hacks and workarounds to overcome geo-locative restrictions,8 or to access premium app features without payment.9 Liu and Wu and Ward have noted the ways that Chinese app developers have responded to external moral and political pressures by re-branding dating/hookup apps, such as Momo and Blued, to emphasise non-sexual social networking features.10 And, at the level of a single app and its connection to other apps, the identification and analysis of such data structures and flows can certainly be accommodated within interface methods approaches that can be used both forensically and in participatory projects that aim to enhance data literacy among ordinary users.11 Theoretical Framework and Approach However, we still know remarkably little about the corporate structures behind these apps, how economic value is attributed to and extracted from dating app data, and how these data are monetised. To address this gap, in this article we build on the political economy of communication approach and apply it to the data markets of dating apps. Using maximum variation purposive sampling,12 we selected and examine three cases: Grindr; Match Group (parent company of Tinder); and, Bumble. The firms selected for these three cases cover the broad spectrum of the dating app market: Bumble is a small, early stage start-up; Grindr is an established, mid-sized operation with strong brand presence; and, Match Group is a large conglomerate and corporate heavyweight in the industry, with a long history operating and managing dating services. These three have also been selected for the way that, while operating in the same space, each employs somewhat distinct business structures and revenue models. The political economy of communication is an established and well-tested approach13 that has been applied not only to the analysis of regulated broadcast media industries, but has already also been partially adapted to addressing the distinctive challenges of studying search,14 mobile,15 locative,16 and social media17 industries. As Jonathan Hardy explains, ‘critical political economy rests on a central claim: different ways of organising and financing communications have implications for the range and nature of media content, and the ways in which this is consumed and used.’18 It forms a productive approach for understanding the financing arrangements, business models, and other vested interests of various media industries, thereby guiding analyses of their political and social impacts. When applied to dating apps, a political economy approach directs our attention to the different stakeholders involved with controlling and commercialising applications for web-based and mobile devices, how these are being affected by dynamically changing forces, and what data is generated through them and how it is used and to what ends. In adopting this approach, we ask: What structural factors shape the dating app industry? What are the business structures and revenue models that make dating apps so lucrative? And what strategies have dating app firms adopted to profitably expand their shares of the user/data markets in light of these structural factors? Exploring these issues is vital if we are to make better
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