Motivation, Appearance Focus, and Exclusion on Gay Dating App “Blued” in China: Content and Network Analysis of Textual Self-Presentation

ABSTRACT

Blued is the most popular gay dating app among Chinese sexual minority men. This study explored the textual self-presentation of the profiles on Blued in terms of motivation, appearance focus, and exclusion. A total of 10,000 profiles were randomly selected from a dataset of 197,516 profiles using an interval sampling method. A total of 230 features were developed, and six themes were extracted from 4,881 profiles based on content analysis. The themes were motivation, personal information, partner preference, partner non-preference, sexual preference, and communication preference. Body and age were the most commonly mentioned self-presentations, followed by attractiveness and masculinity. Self-presentations largely focused on the users’ photos are prominent on Blued. Exclusion against those who were “overweight,” “elderly,” “unattractive,” and “effeminate” was common. Network analysis was used to analyze and visualize the co-occurrence of these features. Appearance focus and exclusion features were linked with both “hookup” and “no hookup” motivations. Photo-focused communication was linked to the exclusion of others. “No hookup” motivation was associated with more social motivation (e.g., making friends and chatting) and trait-focused communication (e.g., being polite and permanent). “Hookup” motivation was associated with genital presentations (i.e., “big penis” and “like big penis”). Most self-presentation features of sexual preference were sexual role-specific. The results indicate a widespread focus on appearance and exclusion on Blued, which may negatively affect the mental health of Chinese sexual minority men.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Consent to Participate

This study analyzed profiles and no participants were involved.

Data Availability Statement

Study data is available upon request.

Ethics Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2218345.

Additional information

Funding

This research is sponsored by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU2209237), and Innovation Research 2035 Pilot Plan of Southwest University (SWUPilotPlan006).