Her article, “The Digital Love Market: An Auto-Netnographic Study of Mobile Dating Applications in Turkey Under the Grip of Neoliberalism and Digitalization,” has been published in The Journal of Communication and Media Studies, an international journal published by Common Ground Research Networks and indexed in Scopus (Elsevier), ANVUR, Cabell’s (Psychology), and ProQuest.
The study examines mobile dating applications in Turkey through the lens of neoliberalism and digitalization. Focusing particularly on the Bumble platform, the article employs an auto-netnographic methodology to explore how digital dating practices are transformed into a structured “love market.”
The research analyzes how emotional relationships are increasingly shaped by algorithms, how self-presentation turns into a performative field of competition, and how romantic interactions become measurable, optimizable, and commodified. Concepts such as emotional capitalism, algorithmic governance, and neoliberal subjectivation are concretized through everyday digital dating experiences.
Rather than framing dating applications merely as tools of individual choice or technological innovation, the article positions them as socio-cultural structures intertwined with power, surveillance, and norm-production processes. In this respect, the study makes a significant contribution to the fields of communication studies, new media, digital culture, gender studies, and the sociology of emotions.
Published in December 2025 in Volume 11, Issue 1 of the journal (pp. 141–167), the 27-page article stands out as a current and original academic contribution offering a critical analysis of digital dating and contemporary love practices in Turkey.
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