Dario Carpino – #996726690
Twitter has been established as a medium whereby individuals create and publish a collection of thoughts, facts, or “newsworthy” discussions for others to read and absorb. So, “What’s happening?” Each subscriber to this microblogging site is faced with this question and the answer relates to anything currently happening that is worth publishing. Though difficult to answer within the short, 140-character limit, Twitter has emerged “once as a product of the counterculture,” but has recently transformed into something “decidedly mainstream” (Cross 29). Since its launch in 2006 Twitter transformed into a type of “citizen journalism that relies on and links back to professional news media websites” (Murthy 769). As time passed, common characteristics among social networking websites such as citizen journalism became mainstream for the public today. However, the most common argument in favour of the goal(s) of such websites is that “ordinary people are producing news and consuming news produced by other ordinary people” (Murthy 769).
The 140-character space in which “tweeters” enter their content displays two elements: “the first contains the author’s identity and the message sent; the second part contains data about the tweet – its temporal source and response options” (Crawford 37). Subscribers are able to identify and create discussion topics by “retweeting” posted material if repetition accentuates importance.
The origin of print (through Gutenberg’s contribution to reading, both as a business and a culture) stems from the establishment of a common language among populations which was in turn, printed for future readers. Just as society reaches a general consensus on the use of language, Twitter has revolutionized the idea of language by establishing its own stylistic modes and linguistic variations. If Twitter established itself as the latest evolution in reading culture what, then, are the criteria which constitute a reading society?
Just as every nation establishes independence by differentiating itself from others through language, culture and ideologies, Twitter as a culture changes the way we look at the world. “As popularity increased, more and more citizen journalists felt more obligation towards educating and informing the public” (Murthy 784). Also used in conjunction with news broadcasting, online newspaper publications (especially), and television, the increase in public involvement through online media has established individuality as the vehicle for future publicity.
With respect to Twitter’s expanding target audience, “updates on social media and social networking websites have produced new audience configurations” (Murthy 780). Specifically, individuals have a constellation of ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ who can see these updates, but this audience is continually changing minute by minute (Murthy 780). Tweets are vehicles for connecting to larger themes, specific people, and groups. They can be categorized by a ‘hashtag’ (Murthy 781). If particular attention is to be given to a specific person, tweets are directed to those individual(s). Twitter promotes a networking method of communicating with those whom you follow. “These users can be people you are interested in (from A-list celebrities to your neighbour), a magazine/journal, a company, etc” (Murthy 781). Though these short messages are often trivially banal, these messages are circulated as “news.”
“It is estimated that more than 50 million tweets are sent every day” (Murthy 781). Why do people do this? It’s important to people to have personal thoughts voiced. “Messages are automatically posted and are publicly accessible on the user’s profile page on the Twitter website. Anyone with Internet access can instantly see a tweet and respond to it” (Murthy 781).
How do people tweet? Twitter allows users to maintain a public web-based asynchronous ‘conversation’ through the use of various websites, mobile Internet devices, and SMS (i.e. text messages). “Because sending a text message has become a banal activity in scores of countries around the world, the learning curve for using Twitter is relatively low for individuals familiar with ‘texting’” (Murthy 781).
Social gatherings such as book clubs resemble the “grassroots literary community of the past,” but are also becoming transformed at the discretion of popular culture (Rehberg 7). Contemporary practices have thus loosened ties with historical reading practices, “making it possible for anyone to become a writer, and for anyone with an Internet connection and a desire to express his or her opinion to become a reviewer” (Rehberg 7).
Word Count: 679
Works Cited
Crawford, Kate. “News to me: Twitter and the Personal Networking of News.” News Online: Transformations & Continuities. Ed. Graham Meikle and Guy Redden. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. 115-131. Print.
Cross, Mary. Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter are Transforming Popular Culture. California: Praeger, 2011. Print.
Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.
Lassen, David S., and Adam R. Brown. “Twitter: The Electoral Connection?” Social Science Computer Review 29:4 (2011): 419-436. Sage Publications. Web.
Murthy, Dhiraj. “Twitter: Microphone for the Masses?” Media Culture & Society 33.5 (2011): 779-89. Web.
Rose, Frank. The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 2011. Print.
Rehberg, Sedo DeNel. Reading Communities from Salons to Cyberspace. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.
Travis, Molly Abel. Reading Cultures: The Construction of Readers in the Twentieth Century. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1998. Print.
Veltsos, Jennifer R., and Christophe Veltsos. “Teaching Responsibly with Technology-Mediated Communication.” Business Communication Quarterly 73:4 (2010): 463-467. Web.
Zappavigna, Michele. “Ambient Affiliation: A Linguistic Perspective on Twitter.” New Media & Society 13:5 (2011): 788-806. Sage Publications. Web.