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Seeking Love and Companionship through Streaming: Unpacking Livestreamer-moderated Senior Matchmaking in China

Changyang He ; Lu He ; Zhicong Lu ; Bo Li (2023) — Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23)

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DOI: 10.1145/3544548.3581195 (opens in a new tab)

Country:   China
Tags:   China, Digital Inclusion, Financial Fraud, Identity Verification, Livestreaming, Online Dating, Peer Support, Senior Online Matchmaking
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Synopsis

            
This CHI 2023 study investigates livestreamer-moderated matchmaking for single seniors in China, focusing on how live-streaming platforms, matchmakers, and senior participants cooperate to support late-life romance. The authors conducted a qualitative study with 12 senior match-seekers aged 50–70 and 6 female matchmakers, using observations and semi-structured interviews to uncover the practices, benefits, and challenges of this ecosystem. They describe an on-streaming and beyond-streaming workflow in which matchmakers coordinate introductions, mediate conversations, and extend services beyond the livestream to build trust and safety. Two principal interaction patterns emerge for relationship initiation on streaming. First, matchmaker-guided introductions use the live chat to prompt self-presentation, followed by the matchmaker arranging a phone-in with live video or audio so seekers can describe their profiles. Second, matchmaker-mediated communication involves the matchmaker organizing and moderating direct interaction between two seekers, guiding questions and disclosures to assess compatibility. The study also documents additional duties performed by matchmakers to improve service quality, including identity checks, safeguarding against fraud, and coordinating offline meetings. The authors discuss benefits such as greater authenticity, synchronous interaction, and a sense of community that can reduce loneliness for seniors. However, they also identify risks, including the presence of fraud by malicious matchmakers or confederates and the substantial repetitive labor required of matchmakers. Design implications include automating tedious tasks, strengthening safeguarding protocols, exploring fair business models, and extending accessibility for seniors with limited digital literacy. The work remains exploratory, noting the small sample and calling for further quantitative evaluation and cross-platform comparisons.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
Little prior work had examined how seniors access online services through livestreaming or which service features need particular attention. The authors identify livestreamer-moderated senior matchmaking as underexplored, including its practices, relationship initiation, benefits, challenges, and safety. They also note a lack of large-scale quantitative evidence on preferred relationship-initiation methods and limited evidence across platform types and senior demographics.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
This IRB-approved qualitative study combined approximately 48 hours of observations of 30 matchmakers’ livestreaming sessions with remote semi-structured interviews with 6 female livestreaming matchmakers and 12 senior match-seekers aged 50–70 in China. Data were collected in 2021, transcribed from Mandarin, and analyzed through open coding, coder consensus, member checking, source triangulation, and affinity diagramming.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
Most interviewees were urban smartphone users, limiting insight into rural, digitally less-skilled, and more vulnerable seniors. Most participants came from general livestreaming platforms rather than dating or senior-specific platforms. Recruitment through matchmakers may have excluded people with negative experiences. The study lacked large-scale quantitative analysis and did not systematically evaluate whether automating profile collection or identity checking would affect seniors’ acceptance and engagement.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Future research should integrate matchmakers’ expertise into online dating systems; examine how livestreaming affects self-presentation and relationship development across populations and cultures; define matchmaker duties, protections, rewards, and regulation; compare practices across demographic groups; prototype and evaluate design implications; and develop accessible, safe, efficient senior matchmaking systems.

          

              

    
    

        
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