Folk Theories of Online Dating: Exploring People's Beliefs About the Online Dating Process and Online Dating Algorithms
Dados Bibliográficos
| AUTOR(ES) | |
|---|---|
| AFILIAÇÃO(ÕES) | Wayne State University, Stanford University, USA |
| ANO | 2022 |
| TIPO | Artigo |
| PERIÓDICO | Social Media + Society |
| ISSN | 2056-3051 |
| E-ISSN | 2056-3051 |
| DOI | 10.1177/20563051221089561 |
| CITAÇÕES | 4 |
| ADICIONADO EM | 2025-08-18 |
Resumo
How do online daters come to understand and make sense of their online dating experiences and the algorithms that underlie online dating platforms? Across two mixed-method studies, we take a metaphoric approach to identify and explore people's folk theories about traditional dating, online dating, and online dating algorithms. In Study 1, we take a quantitative approach and use an innovative wiki-survey procedure to identify individuals' folk theories of online dating and their associated themes through content analyses. In Study 2, we take a qualitative approach, exploring participants' folk theories through in-depth interviews, extended case method, and grounded theory. Our studies uncovered two folk theories unique to traditional dating ( movies, nurturing), one folk theory unique to online dating ( game), three folk theories related to online dating algorithms ( filter, personalized advertisements, bracket), and two folk theories that were found to overlap between traditional and online dating ( shopping, chance and randomness). Our findings provide novel insights into how daters make sense of traditional and online relationship development processes as well as the algorithms that underlie online dating platforms.