Psychological, Social and Imaginary Dimensions of LGB People who use Dating Apps: A Netnography Approach

Abstract

Social networks and dating apps increasingly represent a novel way to meet people as opposed to traditional face-to-face communication. Virtual platforms are particularly important for gays and lesbians due to the social stigma related to their sexual orientation and are diversified according to their users: the former use Grindr and the latter Wapa. Our research involved a group of users from Campania, in southern Italy, and employs a mixed methods approach. We first studied users’ profiles in both dating apps and then focused on qualitative interviews to reconstruct the psychological (emotional and affective dynamics) and social (sexual script) dimension of the imaginary underpinning online interactions. We aim at filling the partial gap in the Italian research between virtual media and homosexuality, highlighting the communication methods and relational approaches through which gay and lesbian people (and partially also bisexuals) relate through social networks. The first section reviews the relevant literature, connecting it to the relation between new media, affectivity, and sexuality. It explains the notion of sexual identity, an essential epistemological preamble for comprehending the possible phenomenology through which people relate to their own sexuality. The second section explores the apps’ social mechanism, showing gay’s and lesbians’ trends on the emotional, sentimental, or sexual approach. Our purpose is to verify the existence of a different gay or lesbian approach in both applications (in the purpose of its usage and in some of the imaginary dimensions) or if those apps modify the sexual behaviour, thus producing new forms of social and relational homologation. Keywords: sexual scripts, app for dating online, gay and lesbian studies, gender models.