Episode 6: How Dating Apps are Failing Us with Dr. Apryl Williams
Ari interviews Researcher, Scholar, and Teacher Dr. Apryl Williams about her studies of Race & Technology - specifically with Online Dating. Dr. Williams has researched dating in the digital age extensively, and will include her findings in a forthcoming book! Dr. Williams answers Burning Questions like:
How algorithms affect who we see on dating apps
The importance of safe spaces community in the online dating sphere
Balancing research of dating apps vs. using apps personally
What dating apps can do better to protect users from harassment
Editor’s Note: Apryl’s Credentials - Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at the Digital Studies Institute in the University of Michigan, Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and Affiliated Researcher with NYU’s Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies.
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Featured in this Episode
About our Guest: Dr. Apryl Williams is a sociologist and a professor who studies social media, race, gender, and body size. She’s currently working on a book about race and online dating. Her social commentary has also been featured in Time Magazine, Vogue, Slate, and on NPR. She loves all things pop culture and Black Internet culture.
Pronouns: She/Her
More from Apryl:
Uncompensated emotional labor, racial battle fatigue, and (in)civility in digital spaces — by Apryl Williams
I got all my sisters with me (on Black Twitter): second screening of How to Get Away with Murder as a discourse on Black Womanhood — Issue 7: Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS)
Fat People of Color: Emergent Intersectional Discourse Online — Article, MDPI
Boiling Point — Guest, WNYC Studios On The Media
White People: Learn How To Become Better Allies — Guest, Detroit Today
Follow Apryl: Website // Twitter
Resources, Tangents. & Mentions:
The Match Group — Parent Company of Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid, Match.com, and other dating apps
Dating Apps without clear protections or consequences for racial harassment prior to George Floyd’s murder: Tinder, OKCupid, & EHarmony
Fetishization & Fetishism — Episode 5 of SensuElle Podcast for takes on Black Exoticism & Racial Fetishization. More resources & articles below
George Zimmerman kicked off Tinder and Bumble — The Washington Post
Sign up for the Newsletter for updates on when Ari’s article about being Catfished is published: TBA
The Stranger Effect — The Guardian
Sex Ed // Definitions:
Algorithm - a sequence of instructions telling a computer what to do. From Slate
Racial Harassment - Racial harassment is unwelcome behavior that happens to you because of your race, color, or national origin, such as verbal or physical conduct of a racial nature. From WorkplaceFairness.org
Black Feminism - a philosophy that centers on the idea that "Black women are inherently valuable, that [Black women's] liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's but because our need as human persons for autonomy.” From Wikipedia
The Stranger Effect - the tendency to confide in strangers more easily than in intimate friendships, simply because they are strangers. Adapted from The Guardian
Sources:
Dating Apps Without Violence: The Far Reaching Consequences of Dating Apps & Sexual Violence — Tech Without Violence
Debiasing Desire: Addressing Bias & Discrimination on Intimate Platforms
Why Dating Apps Are Racist AF — With or Without Ethnicity Filters — Rolling Stone
Why is it OK for online daters to block whole ethnic groups? — The Guardian
Why Exclusionary Racial Preferences Are Racist — Everyday Feminism
Noteworthy Fetishization/Fetishism Articles:
The Fetishization of Black Women and Learning to value all Women of Color — BSMART
As a Black woman, I'm tired of being fetishized — Hello Giggles
Where the ‘Spicy Latina’ Stereotype Came From – And Why It’s Still Racist Today — Everyday Feminism
I Give Up On Trying To Explain Why The Fetishization Of Asian Women Is Bad — The Huffington Post