Reporting with WhatsApp: Mobile Chat Applications’ Impact on Journalistic Practices

Abstract

Since its release in August 2009, WhatsApp has played a key role in the fast development and expansion of the contemporary polymedia environment within which humans interact with each other. Those in the media, and journalists in particular, have taken to this platform to use it as a way to share and receive information as well as to maintain regular, and sometimes more private, contact with their sources. The goal of this paper is to examine the incentives that underlie journalists’ decisions to turn to WhatsApp and the consequences that this mobile chat application has had on the newsmaking practices of reporters inside two Chilean newsrooms. Newsroom ethnography, including participant observation, is employed in this study to gain insight into journalists’ routines and their everyday usage of WhatsApp. The conclusions of this article suggest that the utilization of WhatsApp has impacted the relationship between journalists and sources both on a personal and professional level. New perceptions of intimacy and trust, camaraderie and obtainability, and temporality are observed among the journalists who use this application. These observations carry important professional and ethical implications for journalists navigating today’s media ecology, and show how technological and socioprofessional aspects are tightly interwoven.