Understanding Communication Among Parents and Teachers in WhatsApp. Case Study in Bandung, Indonesia

WhatsApp is a popular smartphone application for instant messaging which enhances communication within a group. In education, WhatsApp is used as a direct communication media among parents and teachers which has function as a complement of conventional media. In this study, two parents’ WhatsApp groups of elementary school were observed in one month. The first group is general private school while the second group is Islamic based private school. With netnography method, 266 chats of general private school and 237 chats of Islamic based school are observed by two coders. Reliability score using Hostly test in categories is ranged from 0.8 to 1.0. It is found that some topics that discussed in both groups can be classified as student’s permit, greeting, class activity, news and article, educational event and selling product. Other finding is differences of communication style in the group. The parents from general school used more emoticon during their chats, put the link source of news and article however the teachers only participate in chats which related to school activity. While parents and teachers in the Islamic school mostly use Islamic greeting and Islamic words in the chats, less emoticon and did not place the link source of the news or article. Moreover, both groups use informal language in their chats