Qualitative analysis uncovers user agency within algorithmic dating platforms, highlighting tensions between private desire and data-driven market governance.
Key Points
To examine how dating platform users negotiate agency and reclaim psychological sovereignty while managing tensions between personal desires and data-driven algorithmic frameworks.
Conducted a qualitative investigation drawing upon institutional theory.
Collected empirical data through consumer interviews and observational analysis of social media.
Performed discourse analysis to evaluate algorithmic governance and user strategies.
Identified competing institutional logics between personal romantic desires and prescriptive platform metrics.
Demonstrated that consumers engage in institutional work through active adaptation, resistance, and negotiation of platform norms.
Revealed that user efforts to navigate algorithmic intimacy paradoxically sustain the market frameworks that commodify their dating lives.