“It’s a Match!” - A qualitative study of university students’ reflections and behaviours when engaging in romantic and sexual relationships

Sammanfattning: The dating culture and how one can initiate romantic and sexual relationships have developed and changed over the years. The purpose of this research is to explore the Swedish university students’ dating culture. How Tinder is used and how self-presentation looks on Tinder versus offline among the students. The study uses 10 qualitative personal semi-structured interviews with Swedish students, between the ages of 18-24 years. The theoretical framework used in the analysis to help explain the data are Goffman’s self-presentation theory and Butler’s gender theory. The analysis reveals how social norms and presentation of oneself and others on Tinder and offline works differently. On Tinder the impressions of others are based on only their pictures, bios and sometimes texts, which can be misleading since the possibility of concealing parts that do not fit with the idealize role a person tries to be. While offline one can get a feeling of a person from their whole performance where it is harder to conceal parts of oneself and that makes it feel more authentic. Furthermore, some social norms were more apparent on Tinder than offline; people took more safety precautions meeting someone from Tinder than they would if they met someone from a club and people were shallower on Tinder, they went more on a person’s appearance than offline where they went on mostly personality.