New in Town: Gay Immigrants and Geosocial Dating Apps

As an exploratory study of recent immigrants’ uses of and experiences on gay geosocial dating platforms in the greater Copenhagen area, this chapter analyses profile texts on Grindr and PlanetRomeo, and gives voice to ten recent immigrants who use these platforms. The first research ques- tion relates to the ways users form offline social networks through these media; in this regard, gay dating platforms can be viewed as ‘social media’ not unlike mainstream social networking sites. The second research ques- tion relates to discussions of race and exclusion online; with regard to the ways some users transform their public profiles into soapboxes to broadcast political messages, these gay dating platforms – not unlike YouTube and Facebook – can also be spaces for social media activism.