WhatsApp Ebeveyn Gruplarının Dinamiklerini Anlamak: Grup İletişimi ve Bilgi Paylaşımı

Abstract

This paper presents a study of WhatsApp group communication through a case study, which is not searched scholarly yet, thus plans to contribute to this recent area of WhatsApp studies. WhatsApp is a widespread mobile messaging application, which changes the way that people communicate with each other. The instant messaging tool allows users to send messages not only in text forms but also in the video, audio and in picture forms. Particularly it has become quite common to create groups for informal purposes among friends or for more formal purposes among colleagues. Recently WhatsApp parent groups have turned out to be a popular subject but yet only been discussed widely in popular media environments such as daily newspapers or in some blogs or online forums. This kind of group can be considered as an informal group where the determination of coming together is a mutual interest. This research aims to widen the academic study area of WhatsApp by analyzing the dynamics of group communication through this application. To this end, firstly the development of WhatsApp groups and its characteristics and the differences between offline informal groups and online informal groups in terms of effective communication, peer relation and decision-making will be interrogated. Then taking into account the social presence theory and the idea of being aware of communicating with somebody; WhatsApp parent group will be analyzed from the point of view of establishing a personal connection. As the research part of this study collected 6578 messages from a WhatsApp parent group will be evaluated by using content analysis. The results will be stimulating to understand and to explore the dynamics of WhatsApp parent group with regard to group communication and information sharing.