Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 5
Posts 1 - 5

The rise and rise of Whatsapp: 300 billion instant messages are expected to be sent throughout 2014 – and that’s just in the UK

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Newspaper | Mail Online
Date | 7.8.2014
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | research/study, sexting, texting, WhatsApp, youth
Summary | Instant messaging has overtaken texting: The average British person sends just seven text messages a day compared to 46 instant messages. Popular apps are WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, and Viber. Many people have five messaging apps on their smartphones on average. The high amount of instant messaged sent can partly be explained by the flatrate cost rather than paying for every message individually. A Michigan University study shows that half of 18-24 year olds (over 3000 participants) engage in sexting.
Image Description | Photograph of a WhatsApp icon on a screen.
Image Tags | WhatsApp

«What’s Up, Switzerland? »: Spenden Sie Nachrichten für die Forschung

(“What’s Up, Switzerland?”: Donate messages for research)

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Newspaper | Aargauer Zeitung
Date | 1.6.2014
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | research/study, texting, What's up Switzerland, WhatsApp
Summary | Language researchers from various Swiss universities (Neuchâtel/ Zürich/ Bern) are asking the public to submit their WhatsApp messages for research purposes. German, French, Italian, and Romansh submissions will be accepted and the WhatsApp data will be compared to SMS data collected between 2009-2011. The researchers are further interested in whether there are communicative differences in WhatsApp messaging between speakers of different languages or regional dialects.
Image Description | Screenshot of three icons: WhatsApp, Skype, and Dropbox.
Image Tags | Dropbox, logo, Skype, WhatsApp

Das Ende der Telefonbuchse naht

(The end of the telephone socket is approaching)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 7.2.2014
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | texting, WhatsApp
Summary | Swisscom is changing the technology behind landline phone calls to the new VoIP (Voice over IP/Internet) technique, and because Swisscom has lost a lot of business to internet based instant messaging app WhatsApp, they are launching a messaging service called iO, which enables Swisscom clients to text other Swisscom clients for free and unlimited.
Image Description | Photograph in black and white of a woman using a rotary dial phone.
Image Tags | female(s)

Schriftliche Forschheiten: Vom Niedergang der Höflichkeit

(Written briskness: On the demise of politeness)

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Newspaper | Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
Date | 1.9.2014
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | email, language threat, politeness, school, texting, WhatsApp, word/writing
Summary | Communication researchers agree that politeness in professional writing has decreased with the rise of digital communication. Rules of formal writing are omitted: what was“Honored Professor So-and-so” is now a simple “Hello”. Both students and also professors are reported to have a relaxed level of formality in email exchanges. This is usually seen as an influence of texting, where traditional messages of respect are omitted, but it can also be argued that the new brief communication style is a form of respecting the addressee’s time by writing efficiently.
Image Description | Photograph of a female texting; the shot does not show the person's face but emphasizes the phone.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), smartphone, text

A table tout le monde!

(Dinner time everybody!)

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Newspaper | Le Matin Dimanche
Date | 30.3.2014
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, texting, WhatsApp, youth
Summary | The author talks about her experiences at home; she created a dinner schedule so that her kids would notify her of whether or not they would be home for dinner. But the kids would never notify her in advance; they would text her at 19:00 saying they would not come home. Thus, one of the kids created a WhatsApp group for the family. It's fun! There are "ribs emojis" and "spaghetti emojis". They laugh a lot on WhatsApp, so she doesn't even realize that she is eating dinner by herself.
Image Description | Photograph of the author of the article.

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