Two-way symmetrical communication, from [14] excellence theory, holds that effective organisational communication involves genuine exchange in which both organisation and public may be influenced, rather than one-way persuasion. Empirical work applying this to social media finds organisations achieve symmetrical engagement when they actively design for it: deliberate two-way patterns were associated with stronger engagement outcomes ([12]), underlining that symmetry is an achievement of platform use and organisational choice, not an inherent property of any technology. [18], dialogic communication theory sharpens this standard, as it holds that technologies foster genuine dialogue when designed to support openness, mutuality, propinquity and commitment to conversation, asking whether an organisation is genuinely open to being changed by what it hears, a standard beyond mere symmetry. [18] architectural reframing treats dialogic potential as a property of platform architecture, not an automatic consequence of a platform being social: potential is designed in or out, and cannot be inferred from a platform being widely described as social media. Together, two-way symmetry and dialogic theory give this review a two-tier standard: whether any exchange occurs at all, and whether the architecture permits genuine openness to audience input, a distinction that matters in Section 6.

Affordance theory examines how a technology’s possibilities and constraints emerge from the interaction between its material properties and users’ practices. A recent review of affordance definitions proposed a more precise, unified vocabulary for the tradition ([37]). Extending this to messaging platforms, [21], interviewing 35 users of bounded social media places, low-visibility spaces such as private groups and channels, argued that treating an entire platform such as WhatsApp as a single unit of analysis obscures important differences between its private, group and broadcast-oriented spaces, directly supporting this review’s argument that Channels warrant conceptual treatment distinct from WhatsApp as a whole.

Affordance-based accounts of WhatsApp across markedly different contexts show interactivity is not fixed by the technology but varies by configuration. Groups supporting cooperative labour organising among food delivery workers afforded genuine solidarity and collective resistance ([6]); WhatsApp-based support groups for individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder relied on affordances enabling deep reciprocal peer support ([48]; [20]). A cross-platform study found perceived, not purely technical, affordances shape news engagement ([10]), and Global South research argues affordance analysis must attend to region-specific ethical and infrastructural conditions rather than importing Global North assumptions unmodified ([15]), a caution this review has tried to observe throughout. Where the technology permits many-to-many exchange, scholars document genuinely dialogic use; where it architecturally forecloses reply, as in Channels, no comparable use is structurally possible regardless of organisational intent.

Platformisation is the penetration of platform infrastructures, economic logics and governance structures into economic sectors and cultural practice ([36]). Subsequent work examines how platform owners negotiate power with dependent industries, including news publishers’ vulnerability to infrastructure decisions ([35]). [17] apply this to WhatsApp directly, arguing its transformation into a global platform reflects a trajectory toward superapps that absorb commercial, civic and communicative functions previously distributed across separate services. [38] documentation of the tension between WhatsApp’s privacy branding and commercial expansion is direct evidence of platformisation as a lived process, corroborated geographically by [22] finding that Spanish local governments’ pre-Channel WhatsApp use already reflected institutional platformisation, indicating the trajectory reflects a broader pattern of institutional adaptation, not Meta’s product decisions alone.

This article reports a systematic literature review (SLR) structured according to PRISMA 2020 guidance, adapted for a communication-studies subject matter that spans peer-reviewed empirical research, theoretical and conceptual scholarship, and relevant scholarly grey literature. The review addresses literature published between 1 January 2021 and 30 June 2026, while explicitly distinguishing pre-Channel literature (2021-2023), concerning WhatsApp’s organisational and journalistic use prior to the Channels feature, from Channel-era literature (2023-2026), concerning the Channels feature specifically. Foundational theoretical texts predating 2021 (McQuail’s mass communication theory and Grunig’s excellence theory) are cited as background theory rather than counted among the review’s included primary studies, consistent with standard SLR practice of distinguishing a review’s theoretical scaffolding from its evidence base; this distinction is applied consistently throughout and is not treated as an exception to the eligibility rule (see Table 1).

The search was conducted across Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and publisher platforms and repositories not fully indexed by either database (SAGE Journals, ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis Online, SpringerLink, Emerald Insight, Wiley Online Library, ACM Digital Library, DOAJ, SSRN, institutional repositories). Search terms combined four concept clusters: 1) WhatsApp terms (“WhatsApp”, “WhatsApp Channel*”, “WhatsApp group*”, “WhatsApp Business”); 2) corporate communication terms (“corporate communication”, “organisational communication”, “public relations”, “customer engagement”); 3) interaction and dialogue terms (“dialogic communication”, “two-way communication”, interactivity, dialogue, reciprocity, “stakeholder engagement”); and 4) broadcasting and platformisation terms (broadcast*, “one-way communication”, dissemination, “message control”, “organisational control”, platformisation, “platform power”, commercialisation). Appendix reproduces the full search history, including query strings and result counts.

Query construction moved iteratively from broad single-cluster searches to fully specified multi-cluster phrase searches, and record counts varied by orders of magnitude accordingly. Single-cluster queries returned very large, low-precision sets: WhatsApp OR “WhatsApp Business” combined with corporate-communication terms returned 5739 records in Web of Science, and a broader combination of channel and broadcast terminology returned 10,246. These were not screened in full, since assessing several thousand largely off-topic records was not feasible; they confirmed only that the search vocabulary captured the intended topic space. Refinement reduced these to a workable size: the most targeted Web of Science query, “WhatsApp channel AND corporate communication”, returned 5 records, and a broader concept-name search returned 8. A parallel set of Scopus queries using TITLE-ABS-KEY syntax produced a consolidated export of 317 records after removing duplicates; this was screened in full.

Screening proceeded from this combined pool, the full 317-record Scopus export, the high-precision Web of Science queries (5, 8, and 38 records), and the supplementary platform searches, applied against the criteria in Section 4.3. The large low-precision outputs were checked only for additional relevant records beyond those already captured; none were found. Appendix reports the complete search history and the resulting PRISMA flow. See Table A2 in Appendix for the PRISMA 2020 Flow.

Included sources were published between 2021 and 2026 (pre-2021 foundational theory cited separately as background per Table 1); substantially examined WhatsApp, WhatsApp Channels, or comparable broadcast features (Telegram channels) in relation to organisational, corporate, journalistic or civic communication; addressed communication, engagement, dissemination, broadcasting, or platformisation; and were published in English. Peer-reviewed journal articles were prioritised; grey literature was included where it made a substantial contribution but is classified separately (Table 1, reference list). Official Meta and industry sources (Reuters Institute, Nieman Journalism Lab) were used only for factual claims about platform functionality, never as scholarly evidence.

Excluded sources comprised studies outside 2021-2026 (unless serving as background theory, labelled as such); studies in which WhatsApp featured only incidentally (fake-news perception, general COVID-19 misinformation, TikTok, or health-education studies surveying WhatsApp among several platforms); purely technical or clinical studies without a communication-theory contribution; marketing studies concerned only with financial-performance metrics without engaging corporate communication as a construct; and sources whose bibliographic details could not be independently verified. This exclusion category was the single largest determinant of the review’s final size: the great majority of records returned were excluded on this basis, since general social-media research is a much larger literature than research specifically engaging WhatsApp as a corporate communication tool.

Appendix reports the full PRISMA flow. Across all databases and platforms, screening and eligibility assessment yielded 42 scholarly sources: 22 peer-reviewed journal articles, 2 conference or working papers identified directly through the search, 14 further peer-reviewed sources identified through the database search and independently verified against publisher pages and DOI resolvers, and 4 sources identified through citation tracing and likewise verified.

Table 1 partitions the literature base into three categories. Category A comprises the 42 primary scholarly sources meeting all inclusion criteria and constituting the core evidence base. Category B comprises pre-2021 foundational texts, retained solely to establish normative evaluation standards and excluded from the primary evidence count. Category C comprises industry and institutional sources used strictly to verify factual claims, never cited as evidence for a theoretical or empirical claim.

Table 1.Reconciliation of the literature base into evidence-role categories.

Given the heterogeneous mix of study designs, quality appraisal drew on the logic of the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT), which permits differentiated criteria per design rather than a single checklist. Table 2 reports, for each of four evidentiary tiers, the criteria applied and the weight given to claims from that tier in Sections 5 to 8. Conceptual contributions (e.g., [38] discourse analysis) were appraised for argumentative coherence rather than excluded for lacking an empirical design. Grey literature was retained where transparent and relevant, but weighted lower than peer-reviewed journal literature.

Table 2.Quality appraisal tiers and evidentiary weighting.

A data-extraction matrix (Table 3) recorded, for each source: author(s) and year; country; research purpose; communication context; WhatsApp function studied; methodology; theoretical framework; key findings; and relevance to interactivity, dialogue, organisational control, and the re-broadcastification proposition. Thematic synthesis followed an inductive-deductive approach: pre-specified themes formed an initial coding frame, refined iteratively as sources were extracted.

[17] document WhatsApp’s transformation from a founder-era messaging app into a superapp absorbing commercial and civic functions previously distributed across separate services, a trajectory consistent with public relations scholarship tracking practitioners’ engagement across an increasingly fragmented platform landscape. Directly within this tradition, [23] found WhatsApp sustaining genuinely reciprocal, dialogic professional exchange between PR practitioners and journalists, describing it as an alternative tribal city square for the industry, while documenting the occupational strain constant connectivity produced. This is direct, peer-reviewed evidence that WhatsApp’s core architecture was, and remains, capable of the two-way professional dialogue that Channels’ architecture, discussed under Theme 2, structurally removes.

Organisational adoption in African contexts shows this dissemination-oriented pattern was established before Channels existed, not merely compatible with it. WhatsApp was used for Tanzanian public-sector communication largely informally and without institutional authorisation despite recognised benefits ([16]); [29] Zambian evidence treats communication as a managerial output to be optimised, not a relationship to be negotiated, the same one-directional logic visible in Tanzania. South African organisations already treated WhatsApp groups as one platform among several for disseminating institutional messaging, a framing closer to broadcasting than dialogue even before Channels existed ([13]). This is not a regional pattern because [22] found Spanish local governments using WhatsApp primarily for direct service dissemination rather than civic deliberation, on infrastructure that remained fully reciprocal throughout. Three studies, three continents, one finding: given a reciprocal technology, organisations used it to disseminate rather than converse, well before Meta removed the option to do otherwise.

Against this trajectory, dialogic and two-way symmetrical communication establishes the normative benchmark this review uses to evaluate Channels. [18] architectural reframing avoids assuming any platform automatically enables dialogue; dialogic potential is a designed property. [12] found organisations achieving genuinely reciprocal engagement through deliberate strategic choices rather than passive use, reinforcing that successful dialogic social media use depends on affordances supporting reply and exchange, precisely what Channels’ architecture removes.

Platform documentation, Digital News Report ([42]; [31]), and Nieman Journalism Lab’s practitioner interviews confirm a consistent Channel architecture; that is, one-way, admin-only posting in a separate Updates tab; no reply or comment function; follower reaction limited to emoji and polls; and follower privacy maintained from the administrator and other followers, structurally distinct from Groups and Communities. No peer-reviewed study located examines this architecture through a corporate-communication lens. The theme is reconstructed from platform documentation and extrapolation from Theme 1, a gap discussed in Section 5.5 and Section 9.

This architecture has direct consequences for how audience response should be classified, unfavourably to any claim that Channels are meaningfully interactive. This review applies the Consumer Online Brand-Related Activities (COBRA) framework, developed by [39] and formalised by [28] into three tiers, consumption, contribution, and creation, as its own analytical application; no source reviewed develops or applies COBRA to Channels. Applied to Channels, the architecture makes contribution and creation technically impossible as emoji reactions and polls are the entire ceiling, fixed by the software regardless of organisational choice or follower motivation.

The force of this finding is best seen by contrast. [25] analysis of a Nigerian professional association’s WhatsApp Group found interactive messages the predominant category (64.5% of content) where reply was technically available. [48] found the same permissiveness supporting sustained peer support among individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder; cited strictly for what it demonstrates about Groups, not Channels or COBRA. Set against these findings, the consumption-tier ceiling on Channels is the removal of behaviour Groups support at rates of majority use, not a modest reduction from some baseline. The literature’s vanity-metrics critique applies with force follower counts and reaction tallies, the only metrics available to organisations using Channels, and are exactly the category identified as disconnected from evidence of engagement, and no other metric exists because the architecture generates none.

The same architecture that caps engagement also concentrates control, and the evidence does not support treating this as incidental. This is because only administrators may post, organisations exercise complete authority over message selection, timing and framing, with no counter-messaging or dissent possible within the Channel. This is not novel but a pre-existing practitioner orientation Channels formalise and make permanent. [13] South African case study is direct evidence of the orientation independent of platform, saying practitioners described social media strategy in terms of controlling their agenda, not dialogue, even on platforms including Groups that remain technically capable of reply. The plain reading is that practitioners wanted the outcome Channels now deliver by design before Channels existed to deliver it.

Two further studies corroborate this from different settings. [2] found mobile instant messaging in a Malaysian school organisation redistributing decision-making power toward those controlling message flow, even in a nominally multi-way Group. A companion study found event-management organisers using message-control functions, muting, restricting posting, deliberately to suppress open discussion for coordination efficiency ([1]). Neither examined Channels; both found organisations exploiting whatever control the architecture allowed. Read against [13], this is a consistent pattern across three countries: organisations select for reduced interactivity when the technology gives them the choice; Channels remove the choice and make the outcome structural.

A South African study of WhatsApp’s managerial use in a sales company examines the same dynamic, though its findings fall outside what could be independently verified and are noted only as an unconfirmed, directionally consistent data point ([44]). [3] extend the finding into the affective register that employees awaiting a supervisor’s reply reported heightened negative emotion and self-monitoring, so control over messaging is experienced as psychological pressure, not merely an administrative feature. None of this concerns Channels directly, but four studies converging on the same orientation, across health, education, government and corporate settings, is not a weak basis for concluding Channels’ foreclosure of reply answers a demand organisations already had.

This review tests, rather than assumes, whether Channels function as a digital billboard, and the test produces a mixed verdict. [4] and [40] establish the comparator empirically that a billboard is a logic in which an organisation purchases media space and audiences are exposed with no capacity for response, confirmed under close observation by their driving-behaviour studies. Channels reproduce the core of that logic, one-way exposure, no response mechanism, but diverge in three economically significant respects: Channels are free where a billboard is a paid buy; content travels to the follower’s device rather than a fixed location; and exposure requires an opt-in follow rather than passers-by. On the billboard literature’s strict definition, Channels are not a billboard; they lack the paid-media-space requirement central to what a billboard is. What they share is narrower. That is, the exposure logic: one organisation speaking, one audience receiving, nothing built in for reply.

[46] found out-of-home advertising and social media each independently affect brand awareness through different mechanisms; this does not show Channels are a billboard, but shows the two media are functionally comparable, economically distinct routes to the same goal. The interesting question is therefore not whether Channels are a billboard; they are not, but what the different economics imply for who bears the cost.

No study located, including the expanded database search in Section 4, has measured the data cost, storage, or attention burden Channel content imposes on followers; any claim of a measured connectivity cost would be unsupported, and this review makes none. What the evidence supports is a theoretical implication which [8] found WhatsApp’s affordability and prevalence were the stated reasons South Africans chose it over alternatives, establishing connectivity cost as a live, decision-shaping constraint independent of Channels-specific data; [7] document South African infrastructure inequality as general and well-established. Combined with the fact that Channels push an increasing volume of broadcast content onto exactly this cost-sensitive infrastructure, this is sufficient to conclude, as a theoretical implication rather than a measurement, that Channels shift a real infrastructural cost onto audiences in mobile-first markets. That the size of this cost is unmeasured for Channels specifically is a genuine limitation, stated in Section 9, not a reason to avoid the implication.

[38] discourse analysis provides the clearest documentation of platformisation as a lived process within WhatsApp, tracing how its self-presentation evolved alongside commercial expansion. A parallel study of WhatsApp Business in India found monetisation creating structural tension for smaller businesses between free accessibility and new feature costs ([9]), directly relevant to the digital billboard argument in Theme 3 and Section 7. This trajectory intersects with messaging-app trust literature. [34] and [27] argue trust in messaging platforms is determined by governance arrangements, not individual feature design in isolation. This rules out an easy reassurance, since reduced interactivity on Channels cannot be assumed trust-neutral just because it sits inside a platform users trust for other reasons. No study has tested this relationship for Channels directly, so the reputational consequence of Channels’ architecture remains an open empirical question this review cannot resolve favourably by default; the gap is noted again in Section 9.

The organisational advantages of Channels are real, documented in the literature, not asserted for balance. Predictable distribution removes the moderation burden open commenting imposes, treated as substantial in organisational risk-management literature. Direct reach at no media cost improves on declining organic reach on curated feeds, the calculation behind publishers’ Channel adoption ([32]; [42]; [31]). [33] show this preference for control is deliberate when Malaysian Indian community agencies actively chose controlled, single-source crisis messaging to prevent conflicting information circulating; the same architectural feature Theme 2 shows concentrating power also makes communication reliable in this use case. Channels also reduce information overload relative to Groups, extending WhatsApp’s pandemic-era value for rapid health information dissemination in South Africa ([8]) into a lower-noise format.

The limitations converse to Theme 4’s advantages—lack of dialogue, minimal feedback, audience passivity, and reduced accountability—are documented across Themes 2 and 4, and no evidence supports softening this for Channels specifically. [47] documents an ethical risk in WhatsApp’s work-related use generally, saying organisational messaging on a personal device blurs work-life boundaries. This risk worsens for Channels, which remove the one thing making it manageable in Groups, the recipient’s ability to reply or negotiate boundaries. [41] provide quantitative evidence that always-on availability increases work-related strain even while employees value the same tool’s convenience; strain and convenience are the same mechanism viewed from two angles, and a channel keeping the convenience while removing the audience’s remaining points of control cannot be expected to keep the strain constant.

A further limitation, methodological rather than communicative, is a finding in its own right. Across an extensive combined search (Appendix), no peer-reviewed study examines WhatsApp Channels specifically through a corporate-communication lens. This is corroborated independently by a bibliometric analysis mapping 12,947 WhatsApp-related papers, which found organisational applications a comparatively minor strand within literature dominated by health and education studies, with no cluster around Channels as a corporate-communication phenomenon ([45]), strengthening the claim that this gap is a genuine feature of the literature, not an artefact of this review’s search strategy.

This is a genuine literature gap consistent with RQ5, not a search failure. Channels launched globally only in September 2023, and typical peer-review timelines of eighteen months to three years mean Channel-specific scholarship may still be in the publication pipeline. The gap is nonetheless substantively important as it means the central claim this review investigates cannot yet be directly confirmed or disconfirmed by dedicated research on Channels themselves. The argument in Section 7 is presented as an evidence-based extrapolation, not a settled empirical finding.