The recent and ongoing global COVID lockdown situations cause people to work, educate their children, maintain social ties, and engage in other activities from their homes. Communication technologies and social media such as WhatsApp play a crucial role in this new configuration of everyday life, and it is likely that this connected flexibility of work, communities, families, and social contexts will only increase. Anouk Mols and Jason Pridmore conclude this in their latest study about WhatsApp, boundaries, and privacy in Mobile Media & Communication.
Their findings, based on interviews and focus groups conducted in pre-corona times, help understand how people deal with the blurring of boundaries between relational contexts. Mols and Pridmore found two different forms of practices used to protect privacy and maintain boundaries. On the one hand, people devise strategies to negotiate the boundaries between being present and absent, and, on the other hand, they sculpt flexible boundaries between different relational contexts. The meaning of particular contexts, the materiality of messaging apps, and technical know-how play a crucial role in these practices to protect privacy, autonomy and personal boundaries.
Read the full article:Â Always available via WhatsApp: Mapping everyday boundary work practices and privacy negotiations
This study is part of the NWO/NSF-funded Mapping Privacy and Surveillance Dynamics in Emerging Mobile Ecosystems project. Â