Plural and Porous: Reconceptualizing the Boundaries of Mobile Messaging Group Chats

Abstract

In the nascent literature on mobile messaging groups - commonly referred to as "group chats"- there is a tendency to see them as clearly bounded units of interaction with highly-defined borders. While valuable at times, this approach does not fully reflect how group chat boundaries are experienced by the people who encounter them. Accordingly, this article aims to broaden the terms on which group chats are understood by reconceptualizing their boundaries. In doing so, it draws on interviews with 40 young adults about their friendship-based group chats and focuses, in particular, on the experiences of one participant, Matthew, who provided an especially rich account of his overlapping group chats. On the basis of this data, the article argues that the boundaries of group chats are often plural and porous, and that broader approaches to the study of group chats are needed to capture this complexity.