Our reading habits have developed over the centuries. The new media habits have major impact on the form and direction of the reading society. The essence of every society was capture in its folktales and had been passed down by human storytellers: the Bible, the Viking sagas and the Hindu Mahabharata epic all began as spoken stories. Their telling defined nations and shaped civilizations for millennia. (Wilson, 1997) People had then transcribed their thoughts and deeds on clay and papyrus. (Manguel, 1996) Only in the past 500 years, the introduction of multiple-copy printed books had been modified and influenced people’s mind on literature, politics, history and religion. (Wilson, 1997) Later, newspaper became an agency of communication that played upon public opinion by disseminating news, opinion and entertainment. Newspaper and journalism reflected the meaning of the public and its opinion. (Bird and Merwin, 1942) In the 21st century, the reading habit began to move its reliance to the Internet and the social media. In this research essay, I will be focusing on a microblogging service – Twitter and its significance as a reading society.
According to Twitter’s founders, the name Twitter was selected because the dictionary says it means: “ a short burst of inconsequential information”. (Parmelee and Bichard, 2012) Twitter was created in 2006 by a team of programmers who had worked in blogging and podcasting. The San Francisco- based company is the largest microblogging service and the third-largest social networking site (behind Facebook and Youtube). (Parmelee and Bichard, 2012) Twitter allows users to send and receive short messages via mobile phones, email, instant messaging, and the Web. The messages are supposed to be based on the theme “What’s happening?” While Twitter messages can be only 140 characters, a lot can be communicated in that small space. Tweets can include links to websites that provide additional information such as politics, business, entertainment, health care, lifestyle and many more.
Twitter forms a new reading society that has never been experienced; first, it has a significant audiences around the world. The United States has by far the most users, with 51 percent of the total. Brazil, The United Kingdom, and Canada are next, with 9 percent, 7 percent and 4 percent of users, respectively.(Parmelee and Bichard, 2012) Since its founding in 2006, Twitter’s popularity and use has skyrocketed. The service went from about 5 million users at the end of 2008 to 75 million users one year later. (Parmelee and Bichard, 2012) In addition, users are becoming increasingly active. Users went from sending 1 billion tweets a month in the fall of 2008, to 2 billion tweets per month during the summer of 2010. (Parmelee and Bichard, 2012) As a matter of fact, Twitter’s growth curve is clearly accelerating and people are really connected on the network of Twitter. Second, twitter can expand the range of resources to new dimensions; for example, the service can provide on-line interactive links between the readers and the writers. (Wilson, 1997) This allows the readers to choose what information resources they want, when they want it, and in what form. The reading experience in this information age is no longer limited to books, newspaper or magazines. In fact, it is migrating to the world of Internet, where you can receive information within a second in anywhere and at anytime.
Reading shows us who we become and teaches us how to live. We can find our history, stories and traces of our lives through reading. The new media will add a powerful dimension to this cultural pattern. Their capacities for creating and distributing information will go well beyond anything we have yet experienced. I will explore topics on the history of reading societies, address how Twitter acts like one: the readership of Twitter and the difference of old and new forms of social readings; and the social affects of this new reading society.
Work Cited List (Final Research Paper)
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Parmelee, John H; Bichard, Shannon L. Politics and the Twitter Revolution: How Tweets Influence the Relationship between Political Leaders and the Public. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2012. Print.
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