ABSTRACT
Katharina Knop-Huelss, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, and Julia R. Winkler and Jana Penzel, University of Mannheim
The POPC phenomenon has changed the reality of many groups: Through the use of mobile instant messaging applications (e.g., WhatsApp, Snapchat), group members open up an online communication space where they can chime in and out of the group’s latent streams of conversation at any place at any given time. They are POPC as a group. This permanently available communication environment creates perceived facticity of the social connection among its members and is bound to have effects on group processes and the group’s members. In this chapter, we highlight effects on both the group level and the individual level.
