WhatsApp in Latin America

This chapter engages with WhatsApp in Latin America, reviewing different research conducted in this region. Not all Latin American people have entirely similar relations with the app, so the author’s goal is to bring attention to how scholarship from the region converges upon important similarities. As such, rather than arguing for WhatsApp as a single and stable object, the aim is to demonstrate how such a socio-technical system presents important particularities across different contexts and uses. The chapter begins by presenting how the app’s affordances are used as part of people’s everyday lives, which also allows us to understand how it became so popular in Latin America. Next, how this popularity matters as the app tries to make a profit from its near-monopoly over messaging in the region is discussed. Lastly, the moments when the normalization of WhatsApp was challenged, particularly concerning electoral politics.