Abstract
Focusing on recent political unrest in Hong Kong, this article examines how mobile chat applications (e.g., WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, Facebook Messenger and others) have permeated journalism. In Hong Kong, mobile chat apps have served as tools for foreign correspondents to follow stories, identify sources, and verify facts; they have also helped reporting teams manage large flows of multimedia information in real-time. To understand the institutional, technological, and cultural factors at play, this article draws on 34 interviews the author conducted with journalists who use mobile chat apps in their reporting. Building on the concept of media logic, the article explores technology-involved social interactions and their impact on media work, while acknowledging the agency of users and audiences within a cultural context. It argues that mobile chat apps have become hosts for a logic of connectedness and insularity in media work, and this has led to new forms of co-production in journalism.
Highlights
In recent years, reporters have put mobile chat apps to extensive and imaginative use in a variety of reporting contexts across East Asia
While foreign correspondents represent a thin slice of working journalists in Hong Kong, their practices reveal a great deal about how journalists can use mobile chat apps in news production
In communicative contexts in East Asia, where mobile chat apps are so deeply woven into social life, it is important for scholars to explore how connectedness and insularity factor into media work with chat apps
Summary
Reporters have put mobile chat apps to extensive and imaginative use in a variety of reporting contexts across East Asia. To understand and conceptualize the emerging role of mobile chat apps in the media ecosystem, this article draws from the academic literature on media logic (e.g., television and social media) as a starting point. Using a case study of chat apps in reporting, this article finds that the media logic of chat apps reflects the ways mobile chat apps cross boundaries of communication technologies and serve as multimedia conversational hubs While they have developed their own internal sets of norms, mobile chat apps are part of a larger media ecosystem that connects to non-digital (e.g., phone or face-to-face conversations) and digital communication (e.g., social media platforms or other websites, increasingly on mobile devices)
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