3. “Remember that if you choose to include information in your public profile … that information will also become public”: Methods and Ethics for Online, Socio-Sexual Fieldwork

On “perceived privacy,” see discussion of Annette Markham and Elizabeth Buchanan, “Ethical Decision-Making and Internet Research: Recommendations from the AOIR Ethics Working Committee” (Paper approved by the AOIR Ethics Committee, 2012), http://​www.​aoir.​org/​reports/​ethics2.​pdf, 9–10.

This “subgroup” was those who selected something other than “White” from Grindr’s “ethnicity” menu; this data is not meant to suggest that this subgroup’s behaviors differ from the “overall” population on Grindr.

These were mostly users who had signed on only once in the daytime, but also included commuters who signed on only once from my radius.

Additionally, I could have tracked profiles once an hour for better accuracy. As profiles only remain on the grid for one hour, I might have missed some users (i.e. who signed on from 12:10–12:30, and thus were in neither my 12:00 nor my 14:00 data set). Third—and relevant also for the other methods—is that one unique profile does not always correspond to one unique user. As mentioned with regard to relationship status, some Grindr profiles are shared by two users. Additionally, some Grindr users manage two different profiles (e.g. on an iPhone and an iPad) to cater to different needs.

Markham, “Fieldwork in Social Media.”

Christine Hine, Virtual Ethnography (London: Sage, 2000). For contemporaneous methodological publications, see, for example, Andreas Wittel, “Ethnography on the Move: From Field to Net to Internet,” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung [Forum: Qualitative Social Research] 1, no. 1 (2000): Article 21; or Daniel Miller and Don Slater, The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Patricia G. Lange, “Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2007): 361–380.

Robert Kozinets, Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2009); Robert Kozinets, Netnography: Redefined (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2015).

Kozinets used the term “netnography” to define a set of online methods developed from Hine’s. His 2009 book Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online dealt with research for marketing purposes in web communities to which one had to gain access; he asserted that his “specified, distinct, common sense of methodological procedures and protocols” was more standardized, and thus would be more academically respected, than other online ethnographic methods (Netnography: Doing, 60). Even though he sought to streamline online ethnography so that researchers would not have to “reinvent the method” with every study, Kozinets reported that he received some critical feedback on his 2009 book by those who were not convinced that his methods differed substantially from Hine’s; thus when he updated his book in 2015, Kozinets addressed this concern directly, and defended his methods as unique from Hine’s and others’ (Netnography: Redefined, 4, 6). The 2015 book also addressed social media communities more directly, which he felt were “still a bit of a novelty” when writing the first book (Netnography: Redefined, 2, 3).

Markham and Buchanan, 3.

As long as the researcher had access to the internet, the cultural capital to be able to navigate and use the online space, and the ability to penetrate paid memberships, firewalls, or other entry requirements that excluded users from the online field. Markham, “Fieldwork in Social Media,” 437–438.

Markham and Buchanan, 10.

Markham, “Fieldwork in Social Media,” 439.

Ibid.

Light et al., “Gay Men, Gaydar,” 304.

Grindr, “Grindr Terms and Conditions of Service,” effective date: 30 March 2017; accessed Autumn 2017 via https://​www.​grindr.​com/​terms-of-service:

8.3

YOU UNDERSTAND AND HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING TERMS REGARDING PROHIBITED CONDUCT AND USES LISTED BELOW:

 

8.3.1

You will NOT use the Grindr Services or any information displayed within the Grindr Services to “stalk,” harass, abuse, defame, threaten or defraud other Users; violate the privacy or other rights of Users; or collect, attempt to collect, store, or disclose without permission the location or personal information about other Users;

…

 

8.3.12

You will NOT post, store, send, transmit, or disseminate any information or material which a reasonable person could deem to be objectionable, defamatory, libelous, offensive, obscene, indecent, pornographic, harassing, threatening, embarrassing, distressing, vulgar, hateful, racially, or ethnically or otherwise offensive to any group or individual, intentionally misleading, false, or otherwise inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful;

 

Grindr, “Privacy Policy”, last accessed January 2018 via https://​www.​grindr.​com/​privacy-policy. Emphasis added.

Markham and Buchanan, 6.

Ibid., 8–10.

Nico Hines, ellipses in original, as cited and critiqued in Bob Finger, “Straight Daily Beast Reporter Fascinated By Men Who Fuck Men,” Jezebel, 11 August 2016, https://​jezebel.​com/​straight-daily-beast-reporter-fascinated-by-men-who-fuc-1785146830.

Mark Joseph Stern, “This Daily Beast Stunt Is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical,” Slate, 11 August 2016, http://​www.​slate.​com/​blogs/​future_​tense/​2016/​08/​11/​the_​daily_​beast_​s_​olympics_​grindr_​stunt_​is_​dangerous_​and_​unethical.​html.

Michael Andor Brodeur, “How a Writer’s Reckless Sexual Tourism Put Olympians at Risk,” Boston Globe, 12 August 2016, via http://​www.​bostonglobe.​com/​lifestyle/​style/​2016/​08/​12/​how-writer-reckless-sexual-tourism-put-olympians-risk/​Wa48PZ7OmSsYvs6z​NnFirI/​story.​html.

Stefanie Duguay, “Three Flawed Assumptions the Daily Beast Made About Dating Apps,” Social Media Collective Research Blog, 16 August 2016, https://​socialmediacolle​ctive.​org/​2016/​08/​16/​three-assumptions-the-daily-beast-made-about-dating-apps/​.

Kroløkke and Sørensen, 57.

Courtney Blackwell et al., “Seeing and Being Seen: Co-Situation and Impression Formation Using Grindr, a Location-Aware Gay Dating App,” New Media & Society 17 (2015): 1126; Earl Burrell et al., “Use of the Location-Based Social Networking Application GRINDR as a Recruitment Tool in Rectal Microbicide Development Research,” AIDS and Behavior 16, no. 7 (2012): 1816–1820; Andrew DJ Shield, Immigrants in the Sexual Revolution: Perceptions and Participation in Northwest Europe (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 220.

See also the work by two aforementioned researchers, Parisi and Comunello.

Blackwell et al., 1126.

Ibid., 1125.

Sharif Mowlabocus, Gaydar Culture: Gay Men, Technology and Embodiment (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 103–106.

In three cases, I met people face-to-face and invited them to participate in my research. The first instance was at Copenhagen’s Trampoline House, a community center for refugees and asylum seekers. During a weekend of programming, I attended talks about LGBT Asylum and racial positions in Denmark, where I met two informants. We spoke afterward, where I mentioned my research and they expressed interest in participating; we exchanged contact information. In a second instance, I attended a talk about LGBTQ life in the Middle East, and contacted a speaker directly afterward. He was happy to speak to me about his socio-sexual media use. In one instance, I met someone at City Hall Square during Pride, then he contacted me later on my researcher profile for an interview. Otherwise, I never interviewed anyone who I met socially (e.g. at a bar or party, or through a friend).

Hesse-Biber, 147.

Ibid., 143.

Nadje Al-Ali, Secularism, Gender, and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women’s Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 36–37. See especially Chapter 1, “Up against conceptual frameworks: post-orientalism, occidentalism and presentations of the self.”

Sundén, 164.

Ibid., 167–168.

Ibid., 168.

Hesse-Biber, 114.

However, someone more aware of the Danish system would know that a PhD student is a full-time staff member of the university (unlike in, say, the United States). Thus, they would have perceived me as someone in a more powerful position with regard to my role in knowledge creation.

Especially when directed at Scandinavian-born racial minorities; see Chapter 6 and Paula Mulinari, “Racism as Intimacy—Looking, Questioning and Touching in the Service Encounter,” Social Identities 2, no. 5 (2017): 600–613.

Recently I met a Syrian refugee—unrelated to this research—who upon learning that I was from the United States, asked me (perhaps jokingly) if I could change Trump’s opinions about Syrian refugees. This was merely his first impression of me, a sort-of word association between “American,” “Trump,” and “immigration ban.” So when this Middle Eastern refugee heard that I was from the United States, his first association was Islamophobia; but when two other Middle Eastern refugees heard that I was from New York City, they first thought about Sarah Jessica Parker on HBO.

I was only deemed “suspicious” enough to be followed around in stores in 2000, during a brief period where I had dyed my hair blue; otherwise, I don’t recall being harassed in commercial establishments or public spaces based on superficial reasons.

In the Danish language, saying that someone is “blue-eyed” can also mean that someone is naïve, but that’s not what he meant here.

Brinkmann and Kvale, 2.

Hesse-Biber, 116.

During the initial interviews, I also asked questions about international correspondence on the platforms (e.g. receiving messages from men from Ghana while living in Denmark), but I dropped this research topic as I came to narrow my focus.

Hesse-Biber, 118, 122–124.

Brinkmann and Kvale.

Regarding the one exception, the interviewee did not want a recording due to concerns about privacy. I took notes by hand throughout the meeting, and typed up a mock transcript within an hour of the interview.

E.g. Brinkmann and Kvale.

Sundén, 173. See also Tobias Raun, “Out Online: Trans Self-Representation and Community Building on YouTube” (Ph.D diss., Roskilde University, 2012), 47. Raun asks himself: does one “censor oneself” if one feels too close with one’s subjects? Or conversely, might one be “more critical of tensions” among the group one researches than an ethnographer with an outsider status?

Sundén, 174.