Ethnographic Vignette

Swipe right or left? What factors do people account for when they swipe right on an online dating app? Would you be so confident in expressing your interest in person? A friend of mine that I interviewed for this ethnography said that “online dating is easier and efficient.” Her biggest driving factor is efficiency. As a neurophysiology and public health major on a premed track, she doesn’t have much time on her hands for socialization. Online dating helps her meet people more efficiently because the apps will match her to people of similar personalities and interests. If they hit it off then great, but if not, then online rejection is a softer blow. To continue my research further, I focused specifically on Muslim online dating. What factors led my friend to online dating as a practicing Muslim youth?

This ethnography focuses on online dating, and how it relates specifically to the Muslim demographic. This includes studying the diversity of Muslims and Muslim dating applications, and how they differ in what they have to offer. Online dating is not a new phenomenon, and it has been studied before by several scholars that focus on a variety of ethnographies. For example, one example of an online dating ethnography that I read in my research is “Why Swipe Right?”, written by Stephanie Braziel. This specific ethnography on online dating focused on how and why college students use the smartphone dating app. However, there is little that ethnographers and scholars have to offer about the Muslim demographics relationship to online dating. I draw on my theory that the increase in online dating amongst Muslims is a result of the shift in culture between digital natives and digital immigrants. This shift in digital culture along with the perception of Islamic culture has also attributed to this increase in Muslim online dating.