Is WhatsApp Chipping Away at Society's Glue?

An interesting piece in The Guardian's Long Read today entitled What's Wrong with WhatsApp.

In the article, the author considers how people's steady migration from the open internet to private groups like WhatsApp has a dark side that we don't consider.

This is interesting for me in many aspects of my life, including this one, where I'm wearing my HoL hat.

The ongoing rise of WhatsApp, and its challenge to both legacy institutions and open social media, poses a profound political question: how do public institutions and discussions retain legitimacy and trust once people are organised into closed and invisible communities? The risk is that a vicious circle ensues, in which private groups circulate ever more information and disinformation to discredit public officials and public information, and our alienation from democracy escalates.

In many countries, it is now the default means of digital communication and social coordination, especially among younger people.

If groups are perceived as a place to say what you really think, away from the constraints of public judgement or “political correctness”, then it follows that they are also where people turn to share prejudices or more hateful expressions, that are unacceptable (or even illegal) elsewhere.

The age of the message board, be it physical or digital, where information can be posted once for anyone who needs it, is over.

If email is going into decline, WhatsApp does not seem to be a viable alternative when it comes to sharing verified information as widely and inclusively as possible.

Groups are great for brief bursts of humour or frustration, but, by their very nature, far less useful for supporting the circulation of public information. To understand why this is the case, we have to think about the way in which individuals can become swayed and influenced once they belong to a group.

While groups can generate high levels of solidarity, which can in principle be put to powerful political effect, it also becomes harder to express disagreement within the group.

When a claim or piece of content shows up in a group, there may be many members who view it as dubious; the question is whether they have the confidence to say as much. Meanwhile, the less sceptical can simply forward it on. It’s not hard, then, to understand why WhatsApp is a powerful distributor of “fake news” and conspiracy theories.

Since the 90s, the internet has held out a promise of connectivity, openness and inclusion, only to then confront inevitable threats to privacy, security and identity. By contrast, groups make people feel secure and anchored, but also help to fragment civil society into separate cliques, unknown to one another. This is the outcome of more than 20 years of ideological battles over what sort of social space the internet should be.

For all the benefits that WhatsApp offers in helping people feel close to others, its rapid ascendency is one further sign of how a common public world – based upon verified facts and recognised procedures is disintegrating. WhatsApp is well equipped to support communications on the margins of institutions and public discussion: backbenchers plotting coups, parents gossipping about teachers, friends sharing edgy memes, journalists circulating rumours, family members forwarding on unofficial medical advice. A society that only speaks honestly on the margins like this will find it harder to sustain the legitimacy of experts, officials and representatives who, by definition, operate in the spotlight. Meanwhile, distrust, alienation and conspiracy theories become the norm, chipping away at the institutions that might hold us together.

Well worth a read in full.