Você tem um novo par: as affordances na construção da interação e da interatividade no Tinder

Abstract

The relationships in post-modernity have gained new communicative territory with the popularization of social networking sites in the virtual space of the Internet, in view of the fact that individuals participate more in cyberspace than in face-to-face living in the real world. For this reason, this study presents the communication based on the use of the web as a mediator of human changes and achievements, developing in the sharing of messages, ideas and emotions, as well as it is observed in the Theory of Affordances a possibility to understand the design of construction of virtual spaces and realize the performance of users to give meaning to symbolic artifacts through affective language. Thus, this research aims to investigate the mechanisms of interaction and interactivity available in the Tinder application, in order to seek explanations about the actions of users during access to its structure and its identity constructions by the search and effectuation of pairs by virtue of the act of "giving match". The theoretical foundation is based on the perception of affordances in different environments, in Gibson (1977, [1986] 2015), Greeno (1994), van Lier (2000, 2002, 2004, 2008), Norman (2008, 2010), Broch (2010), Santos Costa (2013), Silva (2015, 2020) and Calzoni (2022), based on the analysis models listed by Gaver (1991), Norman (2006), Kim and Hong (2012) and Pucillo and Cascini (2014). Furthermore, concepts such as Liquid Modernity in Bauman (2001, 2004), Cyberculture and Cyberspace in Recuero (2012), Social Networking Sites in Boyd and Ellison (2007), Recuero (2009, 2010) and Primo et al. (2017), interaction in Bakhtin [1979] (2011), interaction and interactivity in Primo (2003, 2008), and Multimodality in Kress (2010) and Kress and van Leeuwen ([1996] 2021) were used extensively in this study. The methodology adopted regarding the research objective was exploratory, with a qualitative approach to the problem, developed in cyberspace by a participant observer and involving triangulation between the netnographic method in Kozinets (2014) and Content Analysis in Bardin [1977] (2016), using the categorical or thematic analysis technique for interpretation of the descriptions of the "About me" section of Tinder and the answers to the survey questionnaire. The sample was composed of ten (10) actual Tinder users. The results showed that, even intuitively, Tinder users are able to project their communicative purposes by acting on the possibilities of action when using the app, both in interaction and interactivity. In addition, it was evident that the app manages to present a diversity of resources that provide users with interactivity, mainly to fulfill the objective of searching for other users as a result of the act of "matching" on the free Tinder account. Therefore, the perceptions of the affordances of Tinder's technological objects, once designed by the designers, are not assimilated equally by users during the app's usability.