Van Raemdonck, N., & Pierson, J. (2024). Contentious Content on Messaging Apps: Actualising Social Affordances for Normative Processes on Telegram. In H. S. Dunn, M. Ragnedda, M. L. Ruiu, & L. Robinson (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Everyday Digital Life (pp. 143). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30438-5
This chapter looks at the mutual shaping of platform architectures and norms through the lens of ‘affordances’, from an integrated perspective of Media and Communication Studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS). ‘Affordances’ are emergent relational properties of an individual and its environment. Affordances can help us discover the possible complex environmental factors shaping social interaction, avoiding monocausal perspectives of technological determinism and social constructivism (Gaver, W. W., Ecological Psychology 8: 111–129, 1996; Volkoff, O., & Strong, D. M., Affordance theory and how to use it in IS research. Routledge, In The Routledge Companion to Management Information Systems, 2017). Largely missing from existing conceptualisations of affordances is a collective or ‘social’ perspective on social media.
In particular we investigate which affordances are relevant for normative processes in collectives, by which we mean the establishment, maintenance, and transformation of norms. In this book chapter we first discuss what is meant by ‘affordances’, pinpointing our interest in ‘social affordances’ and what we precisely mean by ‘normative processes’. We identify these affordances with a walkthrough of Telegram, for which we use the walkthrough method (Light, B., Burgess, J., & Duguay, S., New Media & Society 20: 881–900, 2018). Following the explanation of this methodology, we position Telegram as a platform, its vision, operating model, and the presumed user base of this messaging app. We then present the findings of the walkthrough method by explicating the relevant affordances for normative processes.
