Love and hate at the Cultural Interface: Indigenous Australians and dating apps

Abstract

Social media is increasingly entangled in our everyday lives, and it appears inevitable that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Although there has been a wellspring of research on social media, very little is known about Indigenous Australians’ use of these online communication channels. Similarly, there is a paucity of research that investigates the links between social media and intimacy. This article explores Indigenous use of dating applications for ‘hooking up’ and engaging in online romances, and investigates the incidence of ‘sexual racism’ that is often directed at Indigenous online users of romance social media platforms.