The purpose of this study is to analyze how young adult self-present themselves on Tinder and the relationship between user’s self-presentation and gender to investigate if there are differences. While there are plenty of research connected to self-presentation and online dating, most of them were conducted on English speaking dating sites. Since Tinder is a location-based application, the aim of this study is to investigate how Swedish users self-present themselves on Tinder. This study also focuses on variables that have not had much attention when it comes to dating environment but is related to self-presentation (social interaction, taste, personality trait etc.). This essay is addressing the following questions: 1. How do young adults self-present on the dating app tinder? 2. Are there gender differences in how tinder user self-present themselves? To explore and answer the topic, we use a quantitative content analysis approach to examine the photographs, textual description and connections to third party applications in each individual profile. The sample of this study were Tinder users located near Karlstad, Sweden with a approximate range of 161 km. This study analyzed two hundred individual profiles were whereof one hundred are men and respectively women between the age of 18 - 24 as it is the most active age range according to a study conducted in the US. We analyze the variables gaze, dress, social interaction in the photographs. In the textual description the variables hobbies or interests, professions, taste, height, emojis, partner preference and personality trait were analyzed. In the analysis of the results, there were a significant difference between gaze and dress related to gender in the photographs as expected from previous studies. There was surprisingly no significant difference in how men and women present themselves in the textual description although there are difference between them. The analysis and discussion with a reflection to previous study results shows that there is a gendered self-presentation and that gender stereotypes still exists on Tinder. The results serves as a groundwork for future research regarding self-presentation in online dating environment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-72603 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Pettersson, Emelie, Lindström, Warat |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap (from 2013), Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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