Beyond Brand Trust: Strategic Communication, Platform Dynamics, and Female Users’ Trust-Making in Dating Apps
(2025) SKOM12 20251Department of Strategic Communication
- Abstract
- This study investigates how brand trust is constructed, challenged, and redefined on dating applications, with a focus on the communicative strategies and lived experiences of female users. Adopting a qualitative approach grounded in thematic analysis, it draws on semi-structured interviews with 15 women residing in Sweden to examine how users negotiate trust in emotionally charged, algorithmically mediated, and unpredictable digital environments.
Rather than treating brand trust as a static perception of platform reputation, this research reframes it as a relational and socially co-constructed process, emerging from the intersection of platform infrastructure, self-presentation strategies, and social interaction. Female users often do... (More) - This study investigates how brand trust is constructed, challenged, and redefined on dating applications, with a focus on the communicative strategies and lived experiences of female users. Adopting a qualitative approach grounded in thematic analysis, it draws on semi-structured interviews with 15 women residing in Sweden to examine how users negotiate trust in emotionally charged, algorithmically mediated, and unpredictable digital environments.
Rather than treating brand trust as a static perception of platform reputation, this research reframes it as a relational and socially co-constructed process, emerging from the intersection of platform infrastructure, self-presentation strategies, and social interaction. Female users often do not articulate trust in relation to the platform’s brand per se; instead, they evaluate trustworthiness through the behavior of other users, the rhythm of interactions, and the communicative tone of their exchanges. Strategic impression management, selective engagement, and platform-switching behaviors are employed as trust calibration tactics in usage contexts where platform trust mechanisms are insufficient and emotional costs are high.
The findings highlight a shift from platform-led to user-enacted brand trust. Users construct brand trust through ongoing efforts of profile curation, emotional regulation, and by drawing on external signals such as peer recommendations and shared user narratives. Brand trust becomes contingent, negotiated, and fragmented, often more rooted in interpersonal context than corporate messaging. By applying a strategic communication lens informed by dramaturgical theory, technofeminism, and affordance theory, this study contributes a gender-sensitive framework for understanding how brand trust operates within the emotional economy of digital intimacy. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9197197
- author
- Du, Yaqi LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SKOM12 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Brand Trust, Dating Apps, Strategic Communication, Technofeminism, Self-Presentation, Female User, User Experience, Platform Design, Emotional Labor
- language
- English
- id
- 9197197
- date added to LUP
- 2025-06-23 09:46:27
- date last changed
- 2025-06-23 09:46:27
@misc{9197197,
abstract = {{This study investigates how brand trust is constructed, challenged, and redefined on dating applications, with a focus on the communicative strategies and lived experiences of female users. Adopting a qualitative approach grounded in thematic analysis, it draws on semi-structured interviews with 15 women residing in Sweden to examine how users negotiate trust in emotionally charged, algorithmically mediated, and unpredictable digital environments.
Rather than treating brand trust as a static perception of platform reputation, this research reframes it as a relational and socially co-constructed process, emerging from the intersection of platform infrastructure, self-presentation strategies, and social interaction. Female users often do not articulate trust in relation to the platform’s brand per se; instead, they evaluate trustworthiness through the behavior of other users, the rhythm of interactions, and the communicative tone of their exchanges. Strategic impression management, selective engagement, and platform-switching behaviors are employed as trust calibration tactics in usage contexts where platform trust mechanisms are insufficient and emotional costs are high.
The findings highlight a shift from platform-led to user-enacted brand trust. Users construct brand trust through ongoing efforts of profile curation, emotional regulation, and by drawing on external signals such as peer recommendations and shared user narratives. Brand trust becomes contingent, negotiated, and fragmented, often more rooted in interpersonal context than corporate messaging. By applying a strategic communication lens informed by dramaturgical theory, technofeminism, and affordance theory, this study contributes a gender-sensitive framework for understanding how brand trust operates within the emotional economy of digital intimacy.}},
author = {{Du, Yaqi}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Beyond Brand Trust: Strategic Communication, Platform Dynamics, and Female Users’ Trust-Making in Dating Apps}},
year = {{2025}},
}