"whatsapp Usage Differences Amongst Gender: An Exploratory Study"

Abstract

Technology (telephone and internet) has influenced the medium and nature of communication significantly overthe last few years. WhatsApp! I -the dominant mobile instant messaging service provider has become a revolution overnight; offering nothing much, but a 'communication tool' to send and receive text, audio and visual (pictures) messages between individual and groups. With over 500 million subscribers around the world, this phenomenon has become a subject of intense study for researchers and academicians from across the world in the area of communication and marketing. This 3research paper was aimed to study the differences in usage of this communication service (WhatsApp) amongst male and female individuals. Literature that deals with socio-linguistic theories have highlighted differences in the way male and female communicate face-to-face and through other mediums. This study indicated that gender did influence the usage of WhatsApp in some cases, but there were a lot of elements where usage style / pattern / preference showed little or no difference amongst gender. Gender differences were visible in the area of usage of emoticon (Greater number of female respondents agreed to use it often); being part of larger number of groups (Male were part of more groups), active time spent during the day (Male spent lesser time as compared to Females), changing profile picture and status often (Female tended to change more number of times), sharing emotional outbursts on WhatsApp (Females tended to agree more than Males) and sending pictures of their shopping (merchandise) to friends and family (More females agreed to do that as compared to male respondents). The research study also found that in lot of area gender did not make a difference; which corroborates with existing study in the area.