Dating App Responses to COVID-19

#datingwhiledistancing: Exploring dating and hook-up app responses to COVID-19

Co-researchers:

David Myles, Assistant Professor, INRS 

Christopher Dietzel, Postdoctoral Researcher, McGill University  

This project aims to understand the positioning of dating and hook-up apps in the digital media landscape during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Much of these apps’ success has stemmed from their geolocative features and mobile affordances enabling digitally mediated physical encounters with nearby users. However, as these apps have become a commonplace means for individuals to meet sexual and romantic partners, they have often been the target of public health concerns. As a result, the COVID-19 pandemic raises two key points of tension for the ongoing use of hook-up apps: first, these apps could easily be seen as bad actors for public health, facilitating the virus’ spread by enabling contact with proximate individuals outside of one’s family unit. Hook-up apps risk being demonized by governments, health officials, and the media for playing such a role while also posing a tangible health risk through the apps’ pre-configured affordances for facilitating physical encounters. Secondly, if these apps no longer serve the purpose for which they are so well-designed, then this raises a question of ongoing relevance. This collaborative project will examine how hook-up and dating apps address these tensions through an analysis of popular media coverage, app-generated media as well as in-app interventions and design changes. 

Select research outputs:

Duguay, S., Dietzel, C., & Myles, D. (2022). The year of the “virtual date”: Reimagining dating app affordances during the COVID-19 pandemic. New Media & Society. First published January 30, 2022. doi. 10.1177/14614448211072257

Myles, D., Duguay, S., & Dietzel, C. (2021). #DatingWhileDistancing: Dating apps as digital health technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. In D. Lupton & K. Willis (Eds.), The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives, pp. 79-89. Routledge.

Duguay, S. (2020). More than you bargained for: Care, community, and sexual expression through queer women’s dating apps during the COVID-19 pandemic. In L. Melamed & P.D. Keidl (Eds.), Pandemic Media: Preliminary Notes Toward an Inventory, pp. 305-314. Meson Press.