WhatsApp in the World: Disinformation, Encryption, and Extreme Speech
Deep Insights
New York: New York University Press (2025), vii, 375 pp.
Contains bibliogr. pp. 321-356, index
ISBN 978-1-4798-3330-6 (ebook); 978-1-4798-3327-6 (pbk)
"Known by the popular nickname “ZapZap” in Brazil and synonymous with the Internet across Africa and South Asia, WhatsApp has emerged as a major means of communication for millions of people around the world. Unlike social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, WhatsApp offers a closed, encrypted communication architecture that ostensibly limits the reach and exposure of shared content. While recent scholarship has drawn attention to the risks it poses to democratic systems and marginalized communities, WhatsApp in the World is the first study to offer a systematic global view of an encrypted instant messaging service. Rather than taking the technical feature of “encryption” at face value, the volume proposes the conceptual framework of “lived encryptions” to highlight the different, often contradictory, formations around encrypted messaging, as evidenced in the way the promised confidentiality of encrypted messaging is upturned completely when surveilling states seize the phones from suspected dissenters to download the data, or how seemingly closed group communication is channelized to “broadcast” top-down political messages. WhatsApp in the World features field-based and multidisciplinary research, including contributions from practitioners at leading fact-checking institutions on how encrypted instant messaging services play a critical role in shaping extreme speech and disinformation ecosystems in different regions of the world. From election manipulations in South Africa and Nigeria to Russian diaspora activism in Europe to WhatsApp use as an everyday infrastructure in Brazilian favelas and among nationalists in India, this volume demonstrates how many core features of WhatsApp—from disappearing messages and quick forwards to group chats and calls—allow for the amplification of disinformation and extreme speech. Highlighting complex political dynamics on the ground, it also introduces the significant methodological challenges of studying encrypted messaging services, providing critical pathways to address issues around ethical and technical issues of data protection, privacy, and confidentiality." (Publisher description)
Introduction: Lived Encryptions: WhatsApp, Disinformation, and Extreme Speech / Sahana Udupa and Herman Wasserman, 1
PART I: POLITICS OF POLARIZATION
1 Extreme Speech, Community Resonance, and Moralities: Ethnographic Notes on the Use of WhatsApp in Brazilian Favelas / Carolina Parreiras, 29
2 Exclusionary Politics and Its Contradictions: Peddling Anti-Immigrant Sentiments through WhatsApp in South Africa / Nkululeko Sibiya and Iginio Gagliardone, 50
3 Deep Extreme Speech: Intimate Networks for Inflamed Rhetoric on WhatsApp / Sahana Udupa, 68
4 Misinformation behind the Scenes: Political Misinformation in WhatsApp Public Groups ahead of the 2022 Constitutional Referendum in Chile / Marcelo Santos, Jorge Ortiz Fuentes, and
João Guilherme Bastos dos Santos, 88
PART II: (UN)SAFE SPACES
5 Delete This Message: Media Practices of Anglophone Cameroonian WhatsApp Users in the Face of Counterterrorism / Kim Schumann, 111
6 Engaging and Disengaging with Political Disinformation on WhatsApp: A Study of Young Adults in South Africa / Herman Wasserman and Dani Madrid-Morales, 126
7 Discourses of Misinformation in the Russian Diaspora: Building Trust across Instant Messaging Channels / Yulia Belinskaya and Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat, 141
8 WhatsApp in the United States: The Political Relevance of Subversive Platforms / Inga Kristina Trauthig, 159
PART III: INFRASTRUCTURE
9 Contextualizing WhatsApp as Reporting Infrastructure / Ruth Moon, 175
10 Beyond Algorithms: How Politicians Use Human Infrastructure to Spread Disinformation and Hate Speech on WhatsApp in Nigeria / Samuel Olaniran, 189
11 Dis/Misinformation, WhatsApp Groups, and Informal Fact-Checking Practices in Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe / Admire Mare and Allen Munoriyarwa, 204
12 How to Approach Speech Regulation on WhatsApp: Lessons from Regulatory Experiments in India / Amber Sinha, 223
PART IV: METHOD
13 Methodological Challenges in Researching Disinformation on WhatsApp in Turkey / Erkan Saka, 241
14 Researching Political Communication on WhatsApp: Reflections on Method / Tanja Bosch, 254
15 Collecting WhatsApp Data for Social Science Research: Challenges and a Proposed Solution / Simon Chauchard and Kiran Garimella, 267
16 Automating Data Collection from Public WhatsApp Groups: Challenges and Solutions / Nicholas Micallef, Mustaque Ahamad, Nasir Memon, and Sameer Patil, 286
PART V: REFLECTIONS ON POLICY
17 Fact-Checking on WhatsApp in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities / Cayley Clifford, 303
18 Challenges of Fact-Checking WhatsApp Messages in India / Jency Jacob, 309
19 The Policy Problems of Coordinated Harm on WhatsApp in Africa: From Calculation to Observation / Scott Timcke, 313
PART I: POLITICS OF POLARIZATION
1 Extreme Speech, Community Resonance, and Moralities: Ethnographic Notes on the Use of WhatsApp in Brazilian Favelas / Carolina Parreiras, 29
2 Exclusionary Politics and Its Contradictions: Peddling Anti-Immigrant Sentiments through WhatsApp in South Africa / Nkululeko Sibiya and Iginio Gagliardone, 50
3 Deep Extreme Speech: Intimate Networks for Inflamed Rhetoric on WhatsApp / Sahana Udupa, 68
4 Misinformation behind the Scenes: Political Misinformation in WhatsApp Public Groups ahead of the 2022 Constitutional Referendum in Chile / Marcelo Santos, Jorge Ortiz Fuentes, and
João Guilherme Bastos dos Santos, 88
PART II: (UN)SAFE SPACES
5 Delete This Message: Media Practices of Anglophone Cameroonian WhatsApp Users in the Face of Counterterrorism / Kim Schumann, 111
6 Engaging and Disengaging with Political Disinformation on WhatsApp: A Study of Young Adults in South Africa / Herman Wasserman and Dani Madrid-Morales, 126
7 Discourses of Misinformation in the Russian Diaspora: Building Trust across Instant Messaging Channels / Yulia Belinskaya and Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat, 141
8 WhatsApp in the United States: The Political Relevance of Subversive Platforms / Inga Kristina Trauthig, 159
PART III: INFRASTRUCTURE
9 Contextualizing WhatsApp as Reporting Infrastructure / Ruth Moon, 175
10 Beyond Algorithms: How Politicians Use Human Infrastructure to Spread Disinformation and Hate Speech on WhatsApp in Nigeria / Samuel Olaniran, 189
11 Dis/Misinformation, WhatsApp Groups, and Informal Fact-Checking Practices in Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe / Admire Mare and Allen Munoriyarwa, 204
12 How to Approach Speech Regulation on WhatsApp: Lessons from Regulatory Experiments in India / Amber Sinha, 223
PART IV: METHOD
13 Methodological Challenges in Researching Disinformation on WhatsApp in Turkey / Erkan Saka, 241
14 Researching Political Communication on WhatsApp: Reflections on Method / Tanja Bosch, 254
15 Collecting WhatsApp Data for Social Science Research: Challenges and a Proposed Solution / Simon Chauchard and Kiran Garimella, 267
16 Automating Data Collection from Public WhatsApp Groups: Challenges and Solutions / Nicholas Micallef, Mustaque Ahamad, Nasir Memon, and Sameer Patil, 286
PART V: REFLECTIONS ON POLICY
17 Fact-Checking on WhatsApp in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities / Cayley Clifford, 303
18 Challenges of Fact-Checking WhatsApp Messages in India / Jency Jacob, 309
19 The Policy Problems of Coordinated Harm on WhatsApp in Africa: From Calculation to Observation / Scott Timcke, 313
