LBQT*S Dating & Hookup Apps Study

The Navigating LBQT*S Dating App Survey is live!
Click here to take the survey!

Get updates about survey findings and progress on Instagram @LBQTSdating.

The popular story is that lesbian, bisexual, queer, trans, and sapphic (LBQT*S) people primarily connect and find community online due to the intersection of the pandemic, rise of social media and smart phone usage, and the closure on LBQT*S spaces such as bars, festivals, bookstores, and coffeehouses. However, many scholars of gay men’s bars have shown that many bars not only encourage but thrive upon these apps usage in their bars. The majority of the research on dating.hookup app and site usage does not address the experience of LBQT*S people. Studies of LBQT*S experience online are significantly fewer in general, and few have examined how this group connects online beyond social media. These trends inspire a series of questions that I am investigating in my new research study! Woohoo!

  • What are the specific experiences of LBQT*S people in online dating apps, i.e. dating and hookup apps, from a larger survey *and* interview approach?
  • What are the larger dating app ecologies by LBQT*S people that shape their everyday lives? And to what ends?

For more about why I launched the survey and interviews that will follow, and what I’m finding, check out these blog posts (with more forthcoming):

FURTHER READING

Duguay, Stefanie. Personal But Not Private: Queer Women, Sexuality, and Identity Modulation on Digital Platforms. Oxford University Press, 2022.

Duguay, Stefanie, Jean Burgess, and Nicolas Suzor. “Queer Women’s Experiences of Patchwork Platform Governance on Tinder, Instagram, and Vine.” Convergence 26, no. 2 (April 1, 2020): 237–52.

Ferris, Lindsay, and Stefanie Duguay. “Tinder’s Lesbian Digital Imaginary: Investigating (Im) Permeable Boundaries of Sexual Identity on a Popular Dating App.” New Media & Society 22, no. 3 (2020): 489–506.

Mattson, Greggor. Who Needs Gay Bars?: Bar-Hopping through America’s Endangered LGBTQ+ Places. Stanford University Press, 2023.

Renninger, Bryce J. “Grindr Killed the Gay Bar, and Other Attempts to Blame Social Technologies for Urban Development: A Democratic Approach to Popular Technologies and Queer Sociality.” Journal of Homosexuality 66, no. 12 (October 15, 2019): 1736–55.

Smith, Molly Grace. “Queer Enough to Swipe Right? Dating App Experiences of Sexual Minority Women: A Cross-Disciplinary Review.” Computers in Human Behavior Reports, October 3, 2022, 100238.