Gabriel Pereira, Iago Bueno Bojczuk Camargo, Lisa Parks
{"title":"WhatsApp disruptions in Brazil: A content analysis of user and news media responses, 2015–2018","authors":"Gabriel Pereira, Iago Bueno Bojczuk Camargo, Lisa Parks","doi":"10.1177/17427665211038530","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Brazilians have adopted WhatsApp as a national media and communication infrastructure over the past several years, although it is controlled by its private US-based owner, Facebook. This article explores the diverse, contentious and influential roles the app played in the country during disruptions to its use from 2015 to 2018. Using content analysis, we critically engage with user-generated memes and news media coverage responding to these disruptions. In these cases, Brazilians self-reflexively questioned the app’s role in their everyday lives and country, reassessing what it means to rely on a national infrastructure owned by an unaccountable global media conglomerate.","PeriodicalId":45157,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and Communication","volume":"18 1","pages":"113 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2021-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Global Media and Communication","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427665211038530","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
Brazilians have adopted WhatsApp as a national media and communication infrastructure over the past several years, although it is controlled by its private US-based owner, Facebook. This article explores the diverse, contentious and influential roles the app played in the country during disruptions to its use from 2015 to 2018. Using content analysis, we critically engage with user-generated memes and news media coverage responding to these disruptions. In these cases, Brazilians self-reflexively questioned the app’s role in their everyday lives and country, reassessing what it means to rely on a national infrastructure owned by an unaccountable global media conglomerate.
期刊介绍:
Global Media and Communication is an international peer-reviewed journal launched in April 2005 as a key forum for articulating critical debates and developments in the continuously changing global media and communications environment. As a pioneering platform for the exchange of ideas and multiple perspectives, the journal addresses fresh and contentious research agendas and promotes an academic dialogue that is fully transnational and transdisciplinary in its scope. With a network of ten regional editors around the world, the journal offers a global source of material on international media and cultural processes. Special features include interviews, reviews of recent media developments and digests of policy documents and data reports from a variety of countries.