“An Integral Part of Our Lives”: WhatsApp Groups as Socio-Technical Gathering Spaces in Somali Drought Relief

This article examines Somali WhatsApp groups as socio-technical gathering spaces used for emergency assistance during crises. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in Nairobi and Mogadishu, and a case study of a WhatsApp group mobilising drought relief in 2022, we explore how platform usage is shaped by social norms, care practices and kinship structures to enable mobilisation, coordination, and distribution of aid. Inspired by scholarship on communicative affordances, we conceptualise WhatsApp kinship groups as closed but scalable online spaces, highlighting assembly and coordination in a context where disasters and emergencies are recurrent. We argue that these groups extend long-standing Somali mutual support systems into digital space, intensifying practices of connectivity and emergency response, while reflecting and potentially reproducing social hierarchies. By analysing Somali WhatsApp usage as situated socio-technical practices, the article contributes to broader debates on digital and diaspora humanitarianism, vernacular giving, and crisis response.