The Social and Technical Implications of WhatsApp on Modern Communication

[Hayley Durham]

In case if anyone isn't familiar with the messaging app "WhatsApp", it is owned by Facebook and is widely used as the main texting and calling application used in Europe. Instead of using a phone's build-in text messaging application ("IMessage" for Apple, and "Messages" for Android), WhatsApp is used. One of the main reasons it is so popular in Europe is due to the no cost of image messaging. Many European plans do not package image messaging and unlimited text messaging, so people use WhatsApp to bridge this gap to save a few bucks. 

I will not get into my lecture at this point, I think it is more important to show the news article about WhatsApp that sparked my interest in this topic.

The article "On the frontline of India's WhatsApp fake news war" from the BBC talks about the fake news epidemic in India and how WhatsApp, as a form of communication, was a medium to fuel it.

While reading, questions to contemplate: 

• Do developers of new communication systems have a responsibility to the pubic to protect them from exploits and possible abuse? 
  
• What qualifies someone as a "writer", or "rhetorician" nowadays? 
  
• Does SMS count as important rhetoric? 
  
• What other new forms of communication have impacted society in the past 20 years? 
  
• Are developers and writers properly aware of their possible impact on culture, politics, and general life?