A Postcolonial Investigation of Online Dating in Contemporary India

这项研究将分析在新自由主义和后殖民主义的交叉点当代印度在线约会应用程序的结构和使用。它将解决它们在西方技术文化中的起源，并研究这些基于西方规范的应用程序如何在我的祖国印度重新使用。这项研究的方法是跨学科的：应用媒体和文学研究的思想，以及后殖民框架中的性别，种族和阶级等前景化因素，该项目将绘制应用程序用户的价值观和实践，并研究他们所质疑和重新设想的“浪漫”，“亲密”和“爱”的特定概念。扩展由西方使用经验主导的约会应用程序的现有知识，我将开发平台技术的新的批判性观点，以了解它们如何与特定文化的规范和价值观相结合，这些规范和价值观涉及通过本土约会应用程序介导的浪漫关系。虽然数字约会现在正在小城市彻底改变浪漫的伙伴关系，但传统的印度文化只优先考虑包办婚姻中的爱情。随着一个显着的潜在的不稳定的精心构建的社会矩阵的国家，有必要阐明一个后殖民地的观点，如何约会应用程序的用户正在寻找爱情的社会文化的约束在india.Embeding的新自由主义的技术系统，本文将质疑数字殖民主义的影响，发现在跨国公司同质化当地文化交出他们的数据到发达国家。只有少数研究超越了西方占主导地位的“技术消费”框架，从后殖民主义的角度研究在线约会。本研究的目的是展示如何解决新自由主义和后殖民主义纠缠的过程提供了一个强大的透镜的洞察力来研究这些新兴的社会技术现象的影响，在有意义的方式出席的价值观，文化和权力关系在当代印度发挥作用。

This research will analyze the structure and use of online dating apps in contemporary India at the intersection of neoliberalism and postcoloniality. It will address their origins in Western technological cultures, and examine how these apps- based on Western norms- are re-appropriated in my home country, India. The approach of this study is interdisciplinary: applying ideas from media and literary studies, and foregrounding factors like sexuality, race and class in a postcolonial frame, the project will map the values and practices of app users, and examine the particular notions of 'romance', 'intimacy' and 'love' they contest and re-envision. Expanding existing knowledge of dating apps that is dominated by Western use experiences, I will develop new critical perspectives on platform technologies to understand how they are enmeshed in with culturally specific norms and values concerning romantic relationships mediated via home-grown dating apps. While digital dating is now revolutionizing romantic partnerships in smaller cities, traditional Indian culture has only prioritized love in arranged marriages. With a significant potential to destabilize the carefully constructed social matrix of the country, there is a need to articulate a postcolonial view of how dating app users are finding love within the socio-cultural constraints in India.Challenging the neoliberal technological system, this thesis will question the impact of digital colonialism that is found in multinational companies to homogenize local cultures to surrender their data to the developed world. Only a few studies have gone beyond the dominant Western 'technology consumption' framework to examine online dating from a postcolonial perspective. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how addressing neoliberalism and postcoloniality as entangled processes offers a powerful lens of insight to examine the implications of these emergent socio-technical phenomena, in ways that attend meaningfully to the values, culture and power relations at play in contemporary India.