Behind the black boxes of algorithms promoting or adding friction to posts, technical design decisions made to affect behavior, and institutions stood up to make decisions about content online, it can be easy to lose track of the heteromation involved, the humans spreading disinformation and, on the other side, moderating or choosing not to moderate it. This can be aptly shown in the case of the spread of misinformation on WhatsApp during Brazil’s 2018 general elections. Since WhatsApp runs on a peer-to-peer architecture, there was no algorithm curating content according to the characteristics or demographics of the users, which is how filter bubbles work on Facebook. Instead, a human infrastructure was assembled to create a pro-Bolsonaro environment on WhatsApp and spread misinformation to bolster his candidacy. In this paper, we articulate the labor executed by the human infrastructure of misinformation as hetoromation.

The spread of false and misleading information, hate speech, and harassment on WhatsApp has generated concern about elections, been implicated in ethnic violence, and been linked to other disastrous events across the globe. On WhatsApp, we see the activation of what is known as the phenomenon of hidden virality, which characterizes how unvetted, insular discourse on encrypted, private platforms takes on a character of truth and remains mostly unnoticed until causing real-world harm. In this book chapter, we discuss what factors contribute to the activation of hidden virality on WhatsApp while answering the following questions: 1) To what extent and how do WhatsApp’s sociotechnical affordances encourage the sharing of mis- and disinformation on the platform, and 2) How do WhatsApp’s users perceive and deal with mis- and disinformation daily? Our findings indicate that WhatsApp’s affordance of perceived privacy actively encourages the spread of false and offensive content on the platform, especially when combined with it being impossible for users to report inappropriate content anonymously. Groups in which such content is prominent are tightly controlled by administrators who typically hold dominant cultural positions (e.g., they are senior and male). Users who feel hurt by false and offensive content need to personally ask administrators for its removal. But this is not an easy job, as it requires users to challenge dominant cultural norms, causing them stress and anxiety. Users would rather have WhatsApp take on the burden of moderating problematic content. We close the chapter by situating our findings in relation to cultural and economic power dynamics. We bring attention to the fact that if WhatsApp does not start to take action to reduce and prevent the real-world harm of hidden virality, its affordances of widespread accessibility and encryption will keep promoting its market advantages, leaving the burden of moderating content to fall on minoritized users.

China has little public politics. But political technology overlaps with authoritarian methods of social and information control. In India, the world's biggest democracy, the BJP has developed mass participatory propaganda to build a Hindu national state since 2015.

1 Introduction

2 Types of Political Participation

 2.1 Institutional Participation

 2.2 Political Protests

 2.3 Civic Engagement

 2.4 Political Consumerism

 2.5 Social Media as Political Participation

3 Affordances of Social Media and Political Participation

 3.1 The Origin of Affordances Scholarship

 3.2 Conceptualization of Affordances

  3.2.1 Technological Affordances

  3.2.2 Communicative and Social Affordances

 3.3 Affordances in Social Media

 3.4 Social Media Affordances and Political Participation

  3.4.1 Facebook

  3.4.2 Twitter

  3.4.3 YouTube

  3.4.4 Reddit

  3.4.5 Instagram

  3.4.6 Snapchat

  3.4.7 WhatsApp

4 How People’s Social Media Use Translates into Political Participation

 4.1 Uses and Gratifications Approach

 4.2 New Approach: When U&G Meets Affordances

 4.3 Motivations of Social Media Use and Political Participation

5 Active and Passive Uses of Social Media and Political Participation

 5.1 Low-Effort and High-Effort Social Media Activities

6 Conclusions

 6.1 Affordances

 6.2 Uses and Gratifications

 6.3 Active and Passive Uses of Social Media and Political Participation

 6.4 Social Media in the Political Process

7 Future Directions