Mediated Relationships

This paper is about the Internet as a new mode of meeting people and forming relationships. It is argued that the rapidly growing number of Internet 'dating resources' constitute a domain where people are entering into particular forms of interactions that are characterized by interactional 'rules' that facilitate the building of 'trust' between users. Authenticity and 'emotional communication' is, as Giddens (The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992) has suggested, central to the 'pure relationships' of our late modern era. It is therefore appropriate that information and communication technologies are supplementing or replacing traditional routes to potentially romantic encounters that have in the past been mediated by the marriage broker, shadkhan or others taking similar roles.