Hyperlocal, ambient & stratified: the civic life of residential chat groups on instant messengers

Abstract

Broken elevators, leaking pipes, and noisy neighbors–everyday frustrations of urban living increasingly appear in instant messaging apps (IMs) chat groups. In turn, IMs become a part of digital civic infrastructures in contemporary urban housing. We examine how IMs function as civic infrastructures through interviews with 41 residents across Israel and Germany. We find that chat groups create awareness of shared concerns while fostering ambient responsibility–a sense of contributing by reporting issues rather than resolving them. IMs lower barriers to coordination and facilitate collective action around immediate concerns. Simultaneously, they tend to reproduce existing inequalities and create new forms of exclusion. Our findings illuminate how everyday digital tools become consequential civic infrastructures.