Expected and unexpected practices on Tinder and Grindr An ethnographic study of mobile dating applications Author: Alin-Marius Vlad Supervisor: Martin Berg Examiner: Suzan Boztepe Media Technology: Strategic Media Development Master’s program thesis, 15 credits, advanced level Spring 2020 1 Abstract With the popularity of mobile dating applications, different uses of the applications emerged.This ethnographic study focuses on the diversity of use of Tinder and Grindr by international homosexual male students who moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. This diversity of use shows how students influence also the apps and not only how students are affected and forced to use the apps as the designers intended to do. ​ ​ This target group has a diverse background and diverse experience. In addition, this target group has experienced users on these mobile dating apps and newcomers to the city. Moreover, the experiences can differ compared to the local users. By exploring the different uses of these two mobile dating applications three empirical concepts have emerged. The uses of different apps have opened practices that are not intended by the designers of the apps on Tinder and Grindr. These practices can be described into two main categories such as expected and unexpected practices by the designers of the apps. It starts with expected practices but gradually it moves towards the unexpected ones. The first empirical concept Browsing silently describes that international students may have used Grindr in different ways than ​ intended by the designers of the apps. The other empirical concept The loop that never ends describes ​ ​ how international students are so dependent on Tinder and Grindr to get in contact with other males. Moreover, international students used the mobile dating apps in unexpected ways than what the designers of the apps intended. This led into another empirical concept Adapt to a new life.The last empirical ​ ​ concept explores how Tinder is used as a social and logistical tool. The use of Tinder has opened different practices such as to learn the local language (Danish), to look for a local guide or even to get a job. Keywords Mobile dating applications, Tinder, Grindr, Diversity of use of mobile dating apps, Ethnography, Expected and Unexpected Practices 2 Acknowledgements Before proceeding to the world of mobile dating applications, I would like to thank my supervisor Martin Berg who has always pushed me beyond my limits and supported me through the whole project. I would also like to thank my best friend, Alexandra Zidariu, who has always been supporting not only during this project but also when I needed to support the most. I would also like to thank Emma Larsson, for her good advice and help in receiving feedback on my paper but also for personal support. I would also want to thank one of my best friends, Silviu Agafitei who has been my support but also my ‘crying shoulder’ at the IT University of Copenhagen while I was writing my thesis. Nevertheless, I want to also thank my new boss, Dave Pearson who has supported me both with the thesis and my personal issues. Nonetheless, I would like to thank Suzan Boztepe for all the help and great feedback. Not the last, I want to thank all my colleagues and teachers for being the support I needed by always bringing good energy, vibes, and support to each other. 3 Keywords 2 Acknowledgements 3 1. Introduction 5 1.1 Purpose of the study 8 1.2 Research question 9 1.3 Overview of the study 10 2. Literature review 11 2.1 Mobile dating applications 11 2.2 Use of mobile dating applications 17 2.2.1 Uses of mobile dating applications as practices 19 2.2.2 Filtering on Tinder 20 2.2.3 Sexting on Grindr 21 2.2.4 Grindr and PlanetRomeo as a social and logistical tool 23 3. Theoretical framework 26 Socio-technical systems (STS) main principles 27 4. Methodology 31 4.1 Research Design 32 4.2 Ethnography 34 4.3 Digital ethnography 35 4.4 Walkthrough method 36 4.5 Sampling and interviewees 38 4.5.1 Sample size of the study 40 4.5.2 Data collection procedures 40 Interviews 41 Participant observation 42 4.5.3 Data analysis procedures 43 4.6 Co-design 44 4.6.1 Co-design workshops 46 4.7 Limitations 50 4.7.1 Research site 51 4.8 Ethical considerations 52 4 5. Results 54 5.1 Walkthrough Tinder and Grindr 55 5.1.1 The technical Walkthrough Tinder 55 5.1.2 Bots on Tinder 59 5.1.3 Unexpected practices associated with the app 60 5.1.4 The technical walkthrough Grindr 60 5.1.5 Bots on Grindr 63 5.1.6 Unexpected practices associated with the app 64 5.2 The interviews 65 5.2.1 Browsing silently on Grindr 66 5.2.2 The loop that never ends 72 5.2.3 Adapting to a new life 83 5.3 Co-design workshops 87 5.3.1 Workshop #1: CBS students 87 5.3.2 Workshop #2: ITU students 88 5.3.3 Workshop #3: Café in Copenhagen 89 5.4 The Prototype 90 5.4.1 First prototype 92 5.4.2 Second prototype 96 6. Discussion 101 The prototype 105 7. Conclusion 108 References 110 Appendix 115 5 1. Introduction Online dating has become an important part of today's society, especially because finding love is as easy as the swipe of a finger. Online dating has gone through a lot of changes and now the rise of mobile devices accounts for 65% of digital media time. Moreover, online dating differs from traditional dating through the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and provides users with the ​ opportunity to interact with potential partners through the dating site before actually meeting face to face (Finkel et.al,p.6, 2012). ​ With the use of smartphones and GPS, online dating moved towards mobile dating apps. Mobile dating apps connect users to others in the closest geographic location and in real-time. Mobile dating applications allow users to create profiles in order to interact with other users and even try to find sex, dates or even a relationship (Wu & Ward, 2017). Mobile dating apps seem to reduce the time for getting a match compared to traditional dating websites and unlike Facebook, they bring strangers together. In my personal experience, the interest in mobile dating apps all started when I was out with some of my homosexual friends where I noticed that they use a lot of different mobile dating applications. Out of curiosity, I engaged in the conversation to talk to them about these apps and I was curious to know and to understand what these different mobile dating applications have to offer. Therefore, I observed that Tinder and Grindr are the most popular applications used by my homosexual friends. It does make sense why they use Grindr since it is now the biggest mobile dating application for homosexual males, being used in 192 countries by around 7 million users (Grindr, 2009). However, what caught my interest was why did they use Tinder, because Tinder when it got out on the market it was targeting heterosexual people.This trend has been ongoing for some time by only targeting heterosexual people for quite a while. Although, this changed when they enlarged the target group to homosexual and bisexual as well.Tinder 6 stands out by having a unique architecture where users need to have a mutual interest in order to connect with each other. Grindr has a reputation as a short-term dating app being used mostly as a hook-up app. However, Tinder stated that this is an app to find romance. Even though Tinder did not focus on the homosexual counterparts, in the beginning, they are the ones who see Tinder as a place where nice guys go, while their heterosexual counterparts see Tinder as a hook-up application (Mackee,2016). Tinder is known as being mostly a hook-up application by their heterosexual counterparts (Mackee, 2016). In other words, Tinder is seen as Grindr for heterosexual people. Thus, I want to look at the division between these apps. The designers of these two mobile apps designed Tinder and Grindr for people to find sex, dates, or even a relationship. They assume that the apps would provide these needs and that users would use the apps to find one of the above. However, even some people use these apps for these reasons, there is much more beyond how they use these apps. This is also seen in a case study by Shield (2017), where he looks into the usage of mobile dating applications found among immigrants in Copenhagen, Denmark. His study group used Grindr as a social tool in order to create a network and get in contact with the local people. Grindr allowed them to get in touch easier with Scandinavians as it was quite hard for them to get in touch with the locals through face-to-face interaction. Moreover, immigrants have used Grindr as a logistical tool in order to find housing and employment. They used their profile on Grindr as a way to communicate their needs for a job and/or a room in the greater Copenhagen area (Shield, 2017). This study describes the uses of these apps as practices. A practice is used to describe the everyday work of life activities such as norms, routines, and widely shared beliefs (Styhre, 2009). These practices can be viewed as being expected and unexpected. In other words, from the designers’ app perspectives an expected practice is people behaving in the way the app has been designed for such as dating, chatting, hooking-up.