A perfect match? What we can learn about partner choice from online dating data
Online dating has become a widespread feature of modern social life. In less than two decades, seeking partners through commercial intermediaries went from being a marginal and stigmatised practice to a common activity. This makes online dating interesting to scientific inquiry in two ways. First, as a research topic in its own right: online dating is indicative of changing sexual norms and behaviours. Second, data from dating platforms can be used to study partner preferences and matching mechanisms and to test theories on partner choice. In this talk, the speaker will focus on this second approach, showing how “big data” from apps give us unprecedented opportunities to statistically observe courtship.
This seminar is part of the Population Studies Group (PSG) seminar series covering various themes related to demography, population studies and population health.
Speaker
Marie Bergstrom, French Institute for Demographic Studies (Ined)
Marie Bergström is a sociologist and researcher at the French Institute for Demographic Studies (Ined). Her research interests are sexuality, couple formation and singlehood. One of her main research projects focuses on online dating in the heterosexual population. The main results of this project were published in 2022 in The New Laws of Love: Online Dating and the Privatization of Intimacy (Polity Press).
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