Building Participatory Instant Messaging: Developing a Methodology for Online Workshops Using WhatsApp

This paper describes an application of instant messaging to support extended online participatory workshops. We describe the development and application of Participatory Instant Messaging (PIM) within the context of two projects in Sweden, which both aimed to integrate migrant experiences into policy dialogues and societal awareness. The projects brought together artistic practice, research traditions and the active engagement of participants in self-expression. The methodology leveraged the communicative opportunities in a familiar instant messaging platform to facilitate remote participatory workshops, overcoming geographical and logistical barriers that can otherwise constrain workshops to particular localities. PIM was used to co-create narratives and media directly with participants, enriching our understanding of their lives and enhancing public engagement with migrants’ stories, while remaining sensitive to participants’ lives and other commitments. This paper discusses the iterative design of PIM, from pilot experiments to full-scale application, highlighting the methodological insights gained and the practical challenges addressed throughout these phases. We drew on the concept of social affordances of technology, which foregrounds the space of potential interactions within participants’ own use of instant messaging. Social affordances informed both facilitation strategies and the design of participatory activities through bricolage on existing media practices. Offering semi-synchronous workshop activities within a frame of online social interaction provided a rich opportunity for sustained participatory engagement. We discuss the opportunities this provides for both rich data collection and meaningful interaction, which in our case contributed to a deeper understanding of the participant’s experiences and provided opportunities to publicly share content that reflects those. In drawing together these reflections, we aim to contribute to the broader scholarship of participatory practice, both through an account of the method and through a discussion of the design principles underpinning the methodological development. We argue for nuance in appreciating how new technologies can align with the objectives of participatory methodologies, and offer some ideas and principles for process design in this context. The findings underscore the potential of PIM and other technologically mediated methodologies to build on traditional participatory approaches within contemporary digital platforms, expanding the possibilities for civic engagement and collaborative knowledge production in increasingly digital societies.