RETRACTED: Digitally Performed Sensual Selves: Young Adults’ Sexual Scripts in Mobile Dating Apps

Abstract

Symbolically constructing and communicating sexual scripts among the youth when they engage with one another in mobile dating apps have not been thoroughly understood. Using an interpretivist case study design and by interviewing 50 young adult informants, this paper wants to identify how young adults present and perform their presented selves during mobile dating practices. The inductive thematic analysis of the informants’ musings and narrations revealed that three types of sexual scripts are communicated during the mobile dating encounter. The “clean and non-green” sexual script was utilized if there was no intent to be sexual. The “green-yet-hidden” script was used if the user had the intent to be sexual but did not want to be perceived as an initiator of the sexual discussion. The “open and seen” script was chosen when a user is blunt in communicating sexual intents. In conclusion, even if the agency to perform the scripts resided on the users, their appropriation of the dating technology provided the stage for such selves to be functional in the realm of the app.