To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Media Meditation #4

In recent years Twitter has proven to be one of the most interesting and popular social networking sites on the internet. Though it has gained a wide following of loyal fans, it's also a topic of criticism for people who see it as the most ridiculous service the internet has to offer. Until very recently, I was a member of the latter group. Though I'm still fairly critical, I'm beginning to reconsider Twitter's impact on our social and professional worlds. For this media meditation, I'm going to consider Twitter's impact on our lives based on two opinions. One from the article that you provided on our class blog: How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live by Steven Johnson, and the other from an article in Newsweek called Don't Tweet On Me by Daniel Lyons.



The Brain:

Twitter primarily engages the neocortical brain. It's an internet service, so the user must have at least minimal knowledge of the internet and how to use a computer. It also requires reading, processing, and organizing various tweets, a task that my single-minded brain finds pretty difficult without the help of add-ons such as TweetDeck. Understanding tweets is made even more difficult by the constant use of "Twitter language," and symbols such as #hashtags, @ reply-s, and retweets.



The Eight Trends:

Most everything these days is representative of a technological shift, Twitter included. As Steven Johnson mentions in his article, conversations and discussions that take place via Twitter leave a digital record of every comment and tweet.

Twitter is perhaps the biggest representation so far of a personal shift. Johnson's scenario of the conference he attended that hundreds of Twitter followers were also able to attend in a sense is a perfect example. Through Twitter, hundreds of people were able to offer their opinions and suggestions on education and even introduce new topics to the individuals who physically attended the conference. Johnson says that Twitter "added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange." This is a form of mass participation that the world has not experienced before.

Twitter also represents an aesthetic shift since so many people access and use it through their smart phones. Johnson says "One of the most telling facts about the Twitter platform is that the vast majority of its users interact with the service via software created by third parties. There are dozens of iPhone and BlackBerry applications... that let you manage Twitter feeds." Twitter is also a prime example of a medium that is constantly blurring the lines between news, entertainment, art, and commerce.

Because it's only a matter of time before Twitter becomes a huge base for advertising, it also represents an economic shift. With the introduction of Web 2.0, advertisers realized that traditional forms of advertising would soon need to be replaced. Popular social networking sites, such as Twitter, are the new targets of advertisers.

Twitter also represents a huge discursive shift. Twitter allows people to express their opinions to which people can reply or retweet. In this sense, Twitter is basically just one giant discussion.

Because Twitter is an internet service, all tweets get saved somewhere in a database. This fact leads us to consider a cultural shift. We can ask who, besides ourselves and our followers, has access to our tweets and Twitter accounts.

The Seven Principles:

Twitter is interesting to consider when regarding reality construction. As Johnson mentions, Twitter gives us a sense of personal connection to the celebrities that we follow. In my opinion, this constructs a false sense of reality since we obviously don't know these celebrities personally, no matter how religiously we follow their tweets. Johnson also mentions that even if we reply to a celebrity's tweet, it's unlikely that they have the time, interest, or investment to read our single comment among all the other replies or tweets that they receive from other followers.

Regarding production techniques, I'll give Twitter credit in that they make it very easy to setup and create account. I also liked how when creating a username and password, they offered suggestions and told you if your choice was available while you were typing rather than going through the whole process, clicking "next," and then getting the message that your username is already taken or your password is too short.


As with any medium, Twitter is has the potential to contain value messages. Depending on who we follow, we can be exposed to tons of information that we have an interest in, or that is pertinent to various aspects of our life. If we follow companies, then we're giving them an excellent opportunity to convey their value messages to us. On the other hand, as Twitter users, we also have the opportunity to project our value messages onto all of our followers. However, as Lyons points out, "most of what streams across Twitter is junk. One recent study concluded that 40 percent of the messages are 'pointless babble.'"

Johnson touches upon ownership in his article when he asks if the current owners will "sell to Google early or play long ball?" What impact would selling to Google have on the medium itself? In the future, we may find out.

With Twitter, we're left to determine our own individual meanings. Like with value messages, this is all dependent on who we choose to follow, and what we take away from their various tweets.

Persuasive Techniques:

Both articles make great use of hyperbole. Johnson does so right in his title: How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live. Lyons does so when he describes Twitter as "morbidly fascinating, kind of like the forbidden thrill you get watching Maury Povich's show or professional wrestling."

Lyons brings up a sense of bandwagon-ing when he says "Twitter has been around since 2006, but it really took off earlier this year after Oprah Winfrey began using it."

Johnson uses an example of a rhetorical question when he says, referring to Twitter, "Why does the world need this exactly?"

Lyons uses an excellent example of the straw man technique: "Yes, a guy on Twitter posted the first photos of that US Airways plane crash on the Hudson River in January. Yes, Twitter let the world follow the protests in Iran. And yes, Twitter users send links to useful news articles. But forget all the stuff you've heard from bloviating Web gurus about Twitter being useful, or important, or deeply revolutionary. For most users, Twitter is entertainment--a giant TV channel with millions of shows. Almost all of them are garbage."

Lyons, although he clearly states the he doesn't find it funny, uses humor at the beginning of his article when he quotes some of Dane Cook's tweets such as "The future is wide open. What a slut." I also find it quite humorous when Johnson says at the beginning of his article "It's not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying, 'If only there was a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal.'"

One could argue that both articles use testimonial. Johnson is an example of someone who has witnessed how useful Twitter can be, while Lyons is an example of a Twitter user who has not yet found a really pertinent use for it.

It seems that Johnson is using either/or thinking in his article. Though he acknowledges that Twitter could potentially be useful, he focuses almost explicitly on the "garbage" that comes from it. He seems to regard Twitter with strictly black and white thinking; it's either useful or its garbage, with no in-between. Johnson, however, seems to regard it with a more open mind.

Both articles use scientific evidence pertaining to how many followers this celebrity or that celebrity has. Lyons tells us that Ashton Kutcher has 3.5 million followers.

Lyons also does a fair amount of name calling. For example, "Twitter has become a playground for imbeciles, skeevy marketers, D-list celebrity half-wits, and pathetic attention seekers: Shaquille O'Neal, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest."

Here's a funny video satirizing Twitter: