Contentious Content on Messaging Apps: Actualising Social Affordances for Normative Processes on Telegram

This chapter looks at the mutual shaping of platform architectures and norms through the lens of ‘affordances’, from an integrated perspective of Media and Communication Studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS). Largely missing from existing conceptualisations of affordances is a collective or ‘social’ perspective on social media. In particular we investigate which affordances are relevant for normative processes in collectives, by which we mean the establishment, maintenance, and transformation of norms. In this book chapter we first discuss what is meant by ‘affordances’, pinpointing our interest in ‘social affordances’ and what we precisely mean by ‘normative processes’. We identify these affordances with a walkthrough of Telegram, for which we use the walkthrough method. Following the explanation of this methodology, we position Telegram as a platform, its vision, operating model, and the presumed user base of this messaging app. We then present the findings of the walkthrough method by explicating the relevant affordances for normative processes, namely interactability, (external) visibility, ephemerality and interventionability and how they shape normative engagements with contentious content on Telegram.