The Role of WhatsApp in News Consumption in Spain

The second paper in this IAMCR 2019 session is presented by Klaus Zilles, whose focus is on the distribution of disinformation on WhatsApp. The messaging platform has been embroiled in disinformation events in a number of countries in recent times, and has now begun to fund several research projects into the phenomenon, including the present study in Spain.

Spanish users are relatively active on the platform, spending more than one hour per day on average on WhatsApp. They are also increasingly using it to share the news, shifting away from more open platforms like Facebook and Twitter to closed groups on WhatsApp (which is also an attempt to avoid the more belligerent atmosphere on those open platforms).

The project examined this through qualitative focus groups and interviews with regular users across various age groups and other demographic factors who engaged often with media and public debate; a quantitative online survey was also conducted. A number of themes related to problems with the news emerged from this: information overload was seen as a burden, news manipulation was suspected, ‘fake news’ was seen as a problem, news saturation was seen as an issue, a trend of news towards sensationalism was perceived, clickbait was seen as a problem, the immediacy of news coverage was an issue, an omnipresence was perceived, and there was a fear offilter bubbles.

News on WhatsApp was seen as more specific, sporadic, and spontaneous. This is partly because of the platform’s focus on messaging: people join groups on specific subject matters and interests (including political issues and ideologies), follow urgent and local information, and share a lot of video content. ‘Fake news’ is still seen as a problem, but mainly as something that other people fall for because of their lower digital literacies.

The project pursued this further by testing users’ ability to detect ‘fake news’, with limited success. They mainly perceived ‘fake news’ in stories they did not wish to believe for ideological reasons.