WhatsApp, Encryption and the Enticement of Extreme Speech

Higher Seminar in Media and Communication Studies with Sahana Udupa, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich

In this presentation, I will explore WhatsApp as a unique social infrastructure in extreme speech ecosystems, with particular valence and heightened significance in the global South contexts. Rather than technical design features of encryption seen in isolation, WhatsApp might be better understood in terms of interactional and structural dynamics around social relationality, obligation and kinship, and how social relations across a range of contexts are reified and reproduced through WhatsApp communication, with significant ramifications for political discourse. I will propose “deep extreme speech” as a concept to delineate the mediation of WhatsApp and similar applications with group functionalities, raising questions around how encryption unfolds in lived contexts.


Sahana Udupa is Professor of Media Anthropology at LMU Munich. Her research interests include digital politics, politics of artificial intelligence, global digital cultures, online extreme speech and hate speech, news and journalism, urban politics, and media policy.

It is possible to attend the seminar both live on campus or remotely via Zoom (link attached). For more information, please e-mail Saga Hansén (details below).