Feminist Media Studies, 2024, First published 20 December 2024

There is growing evidence that dating app facilitated sexual violence (DAFSV) against women is increasing. As users experience abuse, threats, aggressive behaviour, and/or sexual violence through using dating apps, many engage in safety work with the aim of reducing or avoiding such violence. Women’s experiences of DAFSV have been a focus of media reporting and have only recently started getting research attention. This article adds to this emerging research through a qualitative analysis of individual and group interviews with 17 cisgendered women. The focus is on participants’ reflections on the safety work they engage in when using dating apps, both online and when meeting in-person. I explore the ways in which primarily online safety work provides some participants with a sense of control and safety. I also consider how meeting a man in-person is often fraught with the fear of “being raped and murdered” and the various safety strategies many participants feel they need to enact in order to go on a date or hook up. Given a renewed focus on the concept of rape culture in relation to technology-facilitated sexual violence, I then consider the ways in which women’s safety work is informed by and reproduces the gendered discourses of violence in rape culture. (Author's abstract). Record #9105