A platform perspective for personal information practices on superapps

Platforms like WhatsApp form the backbone for everyday communication in the majority world. Extensive scholarship has focused on WhatsApp’s role in the spread of mis- and disinformation and on WhatsApp being repurposed for use in educational, gig work, and healthcare settings. And while much of this platform scholarship has examined contexts in which users receive and access information, researchers have yet to pay attention to users’ personal information practices such as receiving, storing, and sharing files like images, videos, and PDFs. Based on an interview and task-based study focused on files and managing personal information (N = 25), we present findings that show WhatsApp—as a platform and superapp—is a key site for link sharing between apps, how WhatsApp’s affordances impact users’ perceptions of files, and how superapps shape personal information practices with mobile devices. We discuss the implications of these findings for platform studies research, arguing that platform studies scholars should expand the scope of their studies from top-down governance of data management and information transmission to bottom-up everyday information practices of mobile-first users impacted by platforms.