Exploring networked interactions through the lens of location-based dating services. The case of italian grinds users

LGBTQ people have made intensive use of digital media for their social interactions, having been among the first users to effectively explore the blurring boundaries between the online and the offline realms, with special regard to Location-Based Social Networks (LBSN) (de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2010). As Mowlabocus (2010a, p. 6) observes, ‘the web has always been used by gay men as a means by which physical interaction could be sought, negotiated and organized. Gay men’s digital spaces have historically provided an environment in which offline intimacies can be facilitated’. This chapter analyses the use of the gay male dating application Grindr to explore to what extent the use of a real-time location-based dating service affects the patterns and the flows of online/offline social interactions in urban spaces.