Data‐bility: Endogamous social intimacies on dating apps in Mumbai

IF 3.3 1区社会学 Q1 GEOGRAPHY

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Pub Date : 2024-05-02 DOI:10.1111/tran.12687

Kavita Dattani

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Abstract

In this paper I argue through the double entendre of ‘data‐bility’ that how dateable one is on a dating app relies on data. This techno‐social framework enables an understanding of how dating apps are reconfiguring a politics of sexuality, circumscribed by digital technologies and data. Drawing on research with middle‐class women and gender‐minority dating app users in Mumbai and one dating app executive, the paper investigates how algorithms and users' digital behaviour together constitute data‐bility in three ways. First, dating app algorithms are designed to match those of similar social identities to one another. Second, dating app users engage with others' digital data on profiles and through message chats, reading class through these processes, deciding who to match/reject and correspondingly who is data‐ble. Third, users and algorithmic infrastructures come together to create new regimes of verification, through deeming some users ‘real’ and others ‘fake’ on dating apps, extending violent legacies of categorisation. Together, these processes result in data‐bility, a techno‐social order of digital dating oriented around the exclusion of those labelled ‘creeps’ along class and caste lines.

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数据性：孟买约会应用程序上的内婚社交亲密关系

在本文中，我通过 "数据能力"（data-bility）这一双关语来论证，一个人在约会应用程序上的可约会程度取决于数据。这一技术-社会框架使我们能够理解约会应用程序是如何在数字技术和数据的限制下重构性政治的。本文通过对孟买中产阶级女性和性别少数交友软件用户以及一位交友软件主管的研究，探讨了算法和用户的数字行为是如何通过三种方式共同构成数据性的。首先，交友软件的算法旨在匹配具有相似社会身份的用户。其次，交友软件用户通过个人资料和信息聊天接触他人的数字数据，通过这些过程阅读他人的等级，决定匹配/拒绝谁，并相应地决定谁是数据化的。第三，用户和算法基础设施共同创造了新的验证制度，通过在交友软件上认定一些用户是 "真实的"，另一些用户是 "虚假的"，扩展了暴力分类的传统。这些过程共同造就了 "数据性"（data-bility），即数字约会的技术-社会秩序，其导向是排斥那些被贴上阶级和种姓 "变态 "标签的人。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers GEOGRAPHY-

CiteScore

7.00

自引率

9.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Transactions is one of the foremost international journals of geographical research. It publishes the very best scholarship from around the world and across the whole spectrum of research in the discipline. In particular, the distinctive role of the journal is to: • Publish "landmark· articles that make a major theoretical, conceptual or empirical contribution to the advancement of geography as an academic discipline. • Stimulate and shape research agendas in human and physical geography. • Publish articles, "Boundary crossing" essays and commentaries that are international and interdisciplinary in their scope and content.