Everyday Political Talk in Small WhatsApp Groups

The next speaker in this ECREA 2022 session is Qinfeng Zhu, whose focus is in political talk in WhatsApp groups. This refers not to formal political deliberation, but to everyday political conversations in third spaces online: it is informal, spontaneous, sociable, and outside the realm of formal political discussion. Such casual political talk can be beneficial for democracy as the stakes are lower and the participants are ordinary citizens, but can also be complicated as it emerges in arenas that are less socially grounded where the rules of engagement are less clear. This also means that such political talk, when it happens, is a social achievement.

Social media are important spaces for such casual political talk, but also complicate things because the reception of political posts to open social media spaces is uncertain; much of this talk has therefore migrated to more enclosed, more private, small-group instant messaging spaces. The present study therefore investigated such talk in small, private WhatsApp groups consisting of small groups of family, friends, social peers, and similar in-groups, with a particular focus on young people, and interviewed participants in such groups.

Many participants noted that political views are personal, and self-regulated their political talk by maintaining mutual regard and respect, refraining from the expression of controversial views and the discussion of controversial topics, and moving disagreements from the group to one-on-one chats. Also, the small private groups were seen as making political talk safer as such smaller groups were better known to each other, would work harder to understand one another, and thus avoid misunderstandings.

For some participants, however, politics was seen as inherently divisive, and they preferred to use their WhatsApp groups for bonding, humour, and phatic communication; for them, using these groups was an evasive manoeuvre to avoid or diffuse tensions arising from the presence of political views in more public discussions.

A final group of participants felt that WhatsApp was simply not suitable to political talk because they were too fast-paced, short-form, and random – they lacked what they saw as the textual and deliberative qualities that are required for proper political discussion.

Overall, this shows that politics is seen by its nature as divisive, dangerous, and unpleasant, but that the use of these groups with their specific rules can make it safer – but also less meaningful, due to the features and affordances of the medium.