Photographs, Visual Memes, and Viral Videos:Visual Phatic News Sharing on WhatsApp during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Spain, Italy, and The Netherlands

Sharing and discussing visual images in WhatsApp groups functions as a form of phatic news sharing to achieve a sense of togetherness and sociability. We explore how visual media content shared in personal WhatsApp interactions during the first strict lockdown months of the COVID-19 pandemic functions as phatic news. Our study addresses a gap in journalism studies in researching news-related and visual content from user perspectives. Our article provides insights into how the ‘semi-private’ space of WhatsApp offers people a digital communication space to deal with becoming a news subject durin... Mehr ...