Qualitative and Quantitative Methods for Situating Matching Processes: A Comparative Analysis of Algorithmic Development and Dating Practices

In this talk I will discuss my doctoral thesis' methodology where I studied three different standpoints: Graphical User Interfaces (GUI), developers, and users to understand online dating phenomena. For each standpoint, I retained the relevance of replications (Boullier, 2018). This enabled me to focus on specific entities for each standpoint (e.g., user representation variables, algorithmic input values on interfaces) that have agency over replicating online-dating practices across platforms. Through a comparative analysis, I identified the entities that become conventional across platforms. This way, I focused on comparing the plurality of possibilities that online dating creates for every actor. To build the comparisons, I used both quantitative and qualitative methods, chosen accordingly for every standpoint adopted. More specifically, I focused on the analysis of how data traceability is built on GUI structures due to their crucial role. They mediate developers’ practices of collecting data necessary for defining algorithms and of user interactions for finding a date, a partner, or for establishing at least a contact online. While qualitative analysis enabled me to have a situated view on what matters to actors, the quantitative analysis enabled commensurability of entities.