In this article we engage with methodological challenges that apps pose for empirical analysis and develop an approach to study how apps operate and exchange data between platforms and networks. Complementing previous research on dating apps, our approach involves close attention to the intimacy of app data informed by a relational understanding of infrastructure. We experiment with the research persona as a methodological perspective to collect data at the intersection of five app-infrastructure relations β between app-user, app-device, app-social media, app-network and app-developer β, and initiate or advance an empirical inquiry into the specific materialisations of the data relationships.
The final part of the article reflects on the conceptual and methodological implications of this approach beyond the study of dating apps. In early , as a result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook limited the types of data that third-party apps could access through its application programming interfaces APIs.
The effects of these changes became visible through the temporary breakdown of apps that use the Facebook SSO as an inherent and integral part of their functioning, such as the dating app Tinder. The temporary breakdown of Tinder and the open letter to Google exemplify the complex infrastructural relations with platforms and networks that apps engage in and make visible the resulting dependencies between different actors.
This article contributes to the empirical analysis of apps, which are a new focus of research within media studies. Within software and platform studies in particular, there is an increased technical-material understanding of platforms mediating the diverging interests and interactions among stakeholders.
Even though platforms receive much scholarly attention, as do individual apps, how apps operate on and between platforms and networks is under-studied, which means that their full im possibilities are not accounted for.
