Introducion:
Digital dating platforms like Tinder serve as advantageous spaces for impression management, integrating visual cues and textual narratives in self-presentation.Although prior research has investigated motivations and gender disparities, there is a paucity of studies providing systematic frameworks to classify how individuals formulate desire, affect, humor, and status through multimodal self-presentation.
Objective: This study sought to create and validate a coding system for the analysis of narrative and visual self-presentation strategies on Tinder profiles, incorporating theoretical frameworks from Goffman's dramaturgical model, Mead's concept of the social self, and recent empirical research (Ward, 2017; Dunlop, 2018; Jalagat & Yapo, 2021; Lokanan, 2023).


Method: we used a mixed-methods approach.In the qualitative phase, 200 Tinder profiles (text + image) were classified into five theoretically based categories: Seductive, Flirtatious, Humorous, Formal, and Segregating. Every category had operational definitions, language and visual cues, and rules for making decisions in order. In the quantitative phase, factorial stimuli (5 × 2 = 10 conditions: facial expression × socioeconomic status) were developed and validated using eye-tracking and perception tasks with university participants. Reliability analyses (Krippendorff's α) and descriptive statistics guarantee internal consistency.


Results: Initial findings reveal substantial coder agreement (α = 0.86) and unique perceptual patterns among categories. Seductive and flirtatious profiles drew more attention to the eyes and mouth, while formal and funny profiles made people read the text for longer. Segregating profiles led to extreme moral judgments and a lower sense of authenticity.


Conclusions: The suggested framework connects qualitative discourse analysis with experimental assessments of social perception, providing a replicable model for examining moral and aesthetic judgments of self-presentation in digital dating. The findings underscore the influence of impression management strategies on attention, affect, and desirability in online romantic interactions.