Dwelling Places in KakaoTalk: Understanding the Roles and Meanings of Chatrooms in Mobile Instant Messengers

Abstract

Recently, a great amount of conversation is taking place through mobile instant messaging (MIM) applications. The emergence of mobile messengers has enabled people to spend significant time in MIM, dwelling with close people. To investigate how this persistent use of MIM shaped the roles and meanings of MIM chatrooms, we conducted semi-structured interviews with ten users of KakaoTalk, one of the most popular MIM applications in South Korea. By understanding how participants determine the notion of centrality in MIM, we discovered three functional regions, namely, primary, secondary, and tertiary regions, which respectively support different functions not only in communication, but also in social interaction with various types of relationships: performing everyday life, connecting to the maintained social capital, and connecting to the expired relationship. Based on the valued meanings and user behaviors in those regions, we highlight two approaches that would trigger a new perspective in the design of messaging applications.