Collaborative online reading list on published academic articles and reports related to WhatsApp available here to view and edit.
Politics & the political
Abubakar, N. H. and S. I. Dasuki (2018). Empowerment in their hands: use of WhatsApp by women in Nigeria. Gender, Technology and Development 22(2): 164-183.
Arun, C. (2019). On WhatsApp, Rumours, and Lynchings. Economic and Political Weekly 54(6): 30-35.
Banaji, S., R.Bhatt with A. Agarwal, N. Passanha and M. S. Pravin (2020). WhatsApp Vigilantes: An exploration of citizen reception and circulation of WhatsApp misinformation linked to mob violence in India. Available here
Ballesteros Doncel, E. 2016. “Circulación de memes en WhatsApp: Ambivalencias del humor desde la perspectiva de género,” Empiria. Revista de metodologa de ciencias sociales, número 35. Available here
Baulch, E. A. Matamoros-Fernandez, A. Johns (2017). Ten Years Of WhatsApp: The role of chat apps in the formation and mobilization of online publics. First Monday 28: 573-594.
Bertrand, E., G. Natabaalo and J. Hitchen (2021). Connecting with constituents? Parliamentary aspirants’ use of WhatsApp in Uganda’s 2021 ‘scientific’ election. Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) Available here
Caetano, J. A., J. F. de Oliveira, H. S. Lima, H. T. Marques-Neto, G. Magno, W. Meira and V. A. F. Almeida (2018). Analyzing and characterizing political discussions in WhatsApp public groups. Computer Science. ArXiv.
Cesarino, L. (2019a) On digital populism in Brazil. Political and Legal Anthropology Review – Ethnographic Explainers Available at: https://polarjournal.org/2019/04/15/on-jair-bolsonaros-digital-populism/
Cesarino, L. (2019b) Identidade e representação no bolsonarismo: corpo digital do rei, bivalência conservadorismo-neoliberalismo e pessoa fractal. Revista de Antropologia v. 62, n. 3, pp. 530-557.
Cesarino, L. (2020a) What the Brazilian 2018 elections tell us about post-truth in the neoliberal-digital era. Cultural Anthropology – Hot spots Available at: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-the-brazilian-2018-elections-tell-us-about-post-truth-in-the-neoliberal-digital-era
Cesarino, L. (2020b). How social media affords populist politics: Remarks on liminality based on the Brazilian case. Trabalhos Em Linguística Aplicada, 59(1), 404–427
Cesarino, L. (2020c) Como vencer uma eleição sem sair de casa: a ascensão do populismo digital no Brasil. Internet & Sociedade v. 1, n. 1, pp. 91-120
Cheeseman, N., J Fisher, I. Hassan, I and J. Hitchen (2020) Social Media Disruption: Nigeria’s Whatsapp Politics. Journal of Democracy 31(3): 145-159
Cheeseman, N., J Fisher, I. Hassan, I and J. Hitchen: Is WhatsApp undermining democracy in Africa? Decoding Digital Democracy in Africa. In A collection of essays exploring the interplay between digital technologies, politics, and society across Africa. Edited by N. Cheeseman and L. Garbe: 73-76.
Cruz, E. G., & Harindranath, R. (2020). WhatsApp as ’technology of life’: Reframing research agendas. First Monday, 25(12).
Evangelista, R. & Bruno, F. (2019). WhatsApp and political instability in Brazil: targeted messages and political radicalisation. Internet Policy Review, 8(4
Farooq, G. (2018). Politics of fake news: How WhatsApp became a potent propaganda tool in India, Media Watch. 9: 106-117.
Garimella, K. and D. Eckles (2020). Images and Misinformation in Political Groups: Evidence from WhatsApp in India. Misinformation Review, Harvard Kennedy School
Gil de Zúñiga, H., A. Ardèvol-Abreu and A. Casero-Ripollés (2021). WhatsApp political discussion, conventional participation and activism: Exploring direct, indirect and generational effects. Information, Communication and Society 24(2): 201-218.
Hasan, I and J. Hitchen (2020) Forums of debate? WhatsApp and the Gambia’s Political Transition. Centre for democracy and development. Available here
Hitchen, J., I. Hassan, J. Fisher and N. Cheeseman (2019). WhatsApp and Nigeria’s 2019 Elections: Mobilising the people, protecting the vote. Africa Portal 2-39.
Ilahi, H. N. (2019). Women and Hoax News Processing on WhatsApp. Jurnal Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik 22(2): 98.
Johns, A. (2020). ’This will be the WhatsApp election’: Crypto-publics and digital citizenship in Malaysia’s GE14 election. First Monday, 25(12).
Malka V, Ariel Y, Avidar R. (2015) Fighting, worrying and sharing: Operation ‘Protective Edge’ as the first WhatsApp war. Media, War & Conflict. 8: 329-344.
Matassi, M., P. J. Boczkowski and E. Mitchelstein (2019). Domesticating WhatsApp: Family, friends, work, and study in everyday communication. New Media and Society 21(10): 2183-2200.
Matamoros-Fernández, A. (2020). ’El Negro de WhatsApp’ meme, digital blackface, and racism on social media. First Monday, 25(12).
Milan, S., & Barbosa, S. (2020). Enter the WhatsApper: Reinventing digital activism at the time of chat apps. First Monday, 25(12).
Omanga, D. (2019). WhatsApp as ‘digital publics’: the Nakuru Analysts and the evolution of participation in county governance in Kenya. Journal of East African Studies 13(1): 175-191.
Pang, N., & Woo, Y. T. (2020). What about WhatsApp? A systematic review of WhatsApp and its role in civic and political engagement. First Monday, 25(12).
Pereira, G. and I. Bojczuk (2018) Zap zap, who’s there? WhatsApp and the spread of fake news during the 2018 elections in Brazil Global Media Technologies & Cultures Lab, MIT (9 November)
Rashidi, Y., K. Vaniea and L. J. Camp (2017) Understanding Saudis’ Privacy Concerns When Using WhatsApp, Internet Society. Available here
Santos, M. and A. Faure (2018) Affordance is power: Contradictions between communicational and technical dimensions of WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption. Social Media + Society (22 August).
Santos, M., Saldaña, M., & Rosenberg, A. (2020). From access deprivation to skill acquisition: Cluster analysis of user behavior in face of a 12-hour legal blockage of WhatsApp in Brazil. First Monday, 25(12)
Treré, E. (2020). The banality of WhatsApp: On the everyday politics of backstage activism in Mexico and Spain. First Monday, 25(12).
Social
Ahad, A. D. and S. M. A. Lim (2014). Convenience or Nuisance?: The ‘WhatsApp’ Dilemma, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 155(6): 189-196.
Aharony, N. and T. Gazit (2016). The importance of the WhatsApp family group: an exploratory analysis, Aslib Journal of Information Management 68(2): 174-192.
Dodds, T. (2019). Reporting with WhatsApp: Mobile Chat Applications’ Impact on Journalistic Practices. Digital Journalism 7(6): 725-745.
Flores-Salgado, E. and T. A. Castineira-Benitez (2018). The use of politeness in WhatsApp discourse and move ‘requests’ Journal of Pragmatics 133: 79-92.
O’Hara, K., M. Massimi, R. Harper, S. Rubens and J. Morris (2014). Everyday dwelling with WhatsApp. CSCW ’14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing: 1131–1143
Nouwens, M., C. F. Griggio and W. E. Mackay (2017). ” WhatsApp is for family; Messenger is for friends” Communication Places in App Ecosystems. CHI ’17 – Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 2017, Denver, United States.: 727 – 735
Petitjean, C. and E. Morel (2017). “Hahaha”: Laughter as a resource to manage WhatsApp conversations, Journal of Pragmatics 110: 1-19.
Sánchez-Moya, A. and O. Cruz-Moya (2015). “Hey there! I am using WhatsApp”: A Preliminary Study of Recurrent Discursive Realisations in a Corpus of WhatsApp Statuses, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 212(2): 52-60.
Sánchez-Moya, A. and O. Cruz-Moya (2015). Whatsapp, Textese, and Moral Panics: Discourse Features and Habits Across Two Generations. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 173: 300-306.
Education
Alkhalaf, A. M., A.Tekian and Y. S. Park (2018). The impact of WhatsApp use on academic achievement among Saudi medical students, Med Teach 40(1): S10-S14.
Ayuningtyas, P. (2018). Whatsapp: Learning on the go Metathesiss Journal of English Language and Teaching 2(2): 159.
Bensalem, E. (2018). The Impact of WhatsApp on EFL students’ Vocabulary Learning, AWEJ Group. 9: 23-38.
Blehch Amry, A. (2014). The Impact of WhatsApp Mobile Social Learning on the achievement and attitudes of Female Students compared with face to face learning in the classroom. European Scientific Journal, ESJ 10(22): 1857-7881.
Bouhnik, D. and M. Deshen (2014). WhatsApp Goes to School: Mobile Instant Messaging between Teachers and Students. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research 13
Cetinkaya, L. (2017). An Educational Technology Tool That Developed in The Natural Flow of Life Among Students: WhatsApp. International Journal of Progressive Education 13(2): 29-47
Costa-Sánchez, C. and M. Guerrero-Pico (2020). What Is WhatsApp for? Developing Transmedia Skills and Informal Learning Strategies Through the Use of WhatsApp—A Case Study with Teenagers From Spain. Social Media and Society. July 2020.
Dar, Q. A., Ahmad, F., Ramzan, M., Khan, S. H., Ramzan, K., Ahmed, W., & Kamal, Z. (2017). Use of Social Media Tool “Whatsapp” in Medical Education. Annals of King Edward Medical University, 23(1).
Gachago, D., S. Strydom, P. W. Hanekom, S. Simons and Walters (2015). Crossing boundaries: Lecturers’ perspectives on the use of WhatsApp to support teaching and learning in Higher Education Progressio 37: 172-187.
Graziano, F., R. Maugeri and D. G. Lacopino (2015). Telemedicine versus WhatsApp: From tradition to evolution. Neuroport 26(10): 602-603.
Hamad, M. M. (2017). Using WhatsApp to Enhance Students’ Learning of English Language “Experience to Share”, Canadian Center of Science and Education.7(74).
Issa, B. and A. Alsaleem (2014). The Effect of “WhatsApp” Electronic Dialogue Journaling on Improving Writing Vocabulary Word Choice and Voice of EFL Undergraduate Saudi Students: 32-47.
Kustijono, R. and F. Zuhri (2018). The use of Facebook and WhatsApp application in learning process of physics to train students’ critical thinking skills, Institute of Physics Publishing. 296.
Madge, C., M. R. Breines, M. T. B. Dalu, A. Gunter, J. Mittelmeier, P. Prinsloo and P. Raghuram (2019). WhatsApp use among African international distance education (IDE) students: Transferring, translating and transforming educational experiences. Learning, Media and Technology 44(3): 267-282.
Poon, A., S. Giroux, P. Eloundou-Enyegue, F. Guimbretière and N. Dell (2019). Engaging high school students in Cameroon with exam practice quizzes via SMS and WhatsApp, CHI ’19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.482:1-13
Rambe, P. and C. Chipunza (2013). Using mobile devices to leverage student access to collaboratively generated re-sources: A case of WhatsApp instant messaging at a South African University. Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Advanced ICT and Education
Health
Kamel Boulos, M. N., D. M. Giustini and S. Wheeler (2016). Instagram and WhatsApp in health and healthcare: An overview, MDPI AG. 8.
Montag, C., K. Błaszkiewicz, R. Sariyska, B. Lachmann, I. Andone, B. Trendafilov, M. Eibes and A. Markowetz (2015). Smartphone usage in the 21st century: Who is active on WhatsApp? BMC Research Notes 8(331)
Opperman, C. J. and M. Janse van Vuuren (2018). WhatsApp in a clinical setting: The good, the bad and the law, South African Medical Association NPC. 11: 102.
Sarode, S. C., G. S. Sarode, R. Anand, S. Patil and H. Unadkat (2017). WhatsApp is an effective tool for obtaining second opinion in oral pathology practice. Journal of Oral Pathology & Medicine: Official Publication of the International Association of Oral Pathologists and the American Academy of Oral Pathology 46(7):513-519
Technical
Aburezeq, I. M. and F. Fayez Ishtaiwa (2013). The Impact of WhatsApp on interaction in an Arabic Language teaching course: 165-180.
Al-Maroof, R. A., I., Arpaci, M., l-Emran, S. A. Salloum and K. Shaalan (2021). Examining the Acceptance of WhatsApp Stickers Through Machine Learning Algorithms In Al-Emran, M., Shaalan, K., Hassanien, A.E. (Eds.) Recent Advances in Intelligent Systems and Smart Applications. Springer. 295: 209-221.
Fiadino, P., M. Schiavone and P. Casas (2015). Vivisecting WhatsApp through large-scale measurements in mobile networks, Association for Computing Machinery. 44: 133-134. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
Rosenfeld, A., S. Sina, D. Sarne, O. Avidov and S. Kraus (2018). A Study of WhatsApp Usage Patterns and Prediction Models without Message Content. Computer Science arXiv.
Rosenfeld, A., S. Sina, D. Sarne, O. Avidov and S. Kraus (2018). WhatsApp usage patterns and prediction of demographic characteristics without access to message content, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. 39: 647-670.
Rosler, P., C. Mainka and J. Schwenk (2018). More is Less: On the End-to-End Security of Group Chats in Signal, WhatsApp, and Threema. Proceedings of 3rd IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy: 415-429.