Wade Webster
Zuzu Feder
Writing 101
11-24-14
The Effect of Twitter on Society
Twitter is a very new form of writing compared to the entire history of writing. Being founded in 2006, Twitter has become a very influential force in the world with over 271 million users to date. Following other social networks such as Zynga, MySpace, and Facebook, Twitter has become one of the most powerful social networks to date. Changing the opinions of the public in areas of politics, economics, and religion, tweeting has helped change the course of our history. Some people say that this technology has made the life of the human race better, but others believe that Twitter leads to laziness and it can ruin peoples lives for many reasons. In my opinion, Twitter can be both of these, but must be used responsibly by each individual to reap its benefits.
As many people have stuck around with Twitter since the beginning, many more have followed behind the masses. I personally got involved in Twitter after watching one of my friends use it all the time in my earth science class my sophomore year in high school. I had watched him communicate with my entire school at one time. I was amazed by this and saw so many opportunities for this. After roughly a year of using Twitter faithfully, I had accumulated about 150 followers. While in Twitter terms this is not that many followers, I had found that I had some individuals whom I followed that particularly annoyed me with their personal tweets. They had either been negative tweeters or always putting others down. This frustrated me greatly and I eventually went through and unfollowed all of the individuals that made my twitter experience dreadful. Like many analysts have discussed, Twitter can only be used effectively if the followers are specific to each user. This is pegged the term “refining”. As stated by one analyst and Twitter user, “I have refined it to include those people and topics that are meaningful to me and it gets me the information I need better than almost any other platform” (More on Twitter, the Positives/Negatives and Sturgeon, Now Refinement of Sources Makes It Powerful). This shows two things, first that people only want information that is important to them and not any so called fluff, and second it shows that Twitter can be used as one of the best places to get information.
Twitter being used as a base for news and other information has been occurring for quite some time and it has shown to be very effective. Many events have been posted live by Twitter in the past such as the Osama bin Laden raid and the Boston Marathon. The reason why this is so important is because Twitter can be used as a base for immediate news that is shared with millions of people with the click of one single button. Compared to other sources of news like the radio, television, and the newspaper, Twitter is instant. One example of this is during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan a man named Sohain Athar accidentally live tweeted the entire raid without knowing specifically what was occurring. He was able to release this information roughly nine whole hours before the press was able to report anything to the public. Another example is during the Boston Marathon bombing. At 2:56 one Monday afternoon, Twitter blew up with tweets about a bombing during the Boston Marathon. 15 minutes later the first news station to report the nefarious event, CNN, had already showed up late to the party. Millions of people already knew about the bombings. Twitter has taken over as the leader in news delivery. Less than two hours after the bombing, the Boston police department tweeted, "at least 22 injured, two dead". This shows how little, old news sources are used anymore. Many people find this new source of immediate information to be very important in today's society as it helps keep everything running as smoothly as possible which is very important in today's world. Twitter can spread all sorts of news such as the newest fashion trends, celebrities who died from a drug overdose, local prices of grains like corn or soybeans, and what views politicians have on certain issues.
Politicians also use Twitter avidly. They use it as a base to connect with all of their constituents with ease. Twitter had been seen as a good device for politicians in the beginning of the site, but eventually it began to turn into a negative influence as inappropriate pictures or bad news began appearing about these potential leaders of our country. One example of this is the Democratic representative of New York Anthony Weiner, who a few years ago was accused of sending an obscene picture to a college student over Twitter. With this event, Weiner’s approval by the people of New York and people nationally had dramatically dropped. This Twitter incident greatly affected his political position, and social media has done this to many more politicians also.
Twitter can be used beneficially by political figures too. Today almost all of the political figures in this country use Twitter on a daily basis. They do so in order to remain in contact with the voters and also to help argue their points to the public. This is very beneficial, because the American people are significantly more willing to vote for a candidate if he/she had been talking to this them over Twitter about the people’s needs and how the government would fix them. Before Twitter, political campaigns would have to contact a major news sources before they released a major story, but now all they have to do is post it on the site for everyone to see. This was seen as a huge breakthrough as more people could see the event unfold much quicker than would be able to twenty years ago. Twitter is very important in todays society for it helps to create a more efficient system of government in some aspects.
Twitter can also be important in the process of recruiting for college sports and beyond that. If a student in high school is talking to a college coach about them playing a sport the following year there are a lot of restrictions that in place set by the NCAA. Some of the restrictions include that a coach may only call the student once a week and can not contact them using text messaging. However Twitter is unrestricted as the coach may direct message the student as much as he pleases. This can be very useful in the recruiting process as contact is very crucial for both the coach and the student-athlete. The student must know that the coach is truly interested in them. If the student had a sudden question, they could also contact the coach easily using Twitter. On the other hand, Twitter can also be a way for coaches to drop interest in athletes. One way this could occur is if players have been posting lewd material on their page coaches may realize that isn't the certain type of player they want representing their organization. One actual example of this is the Penn State offensive line coach, Herb Hand, tweeting "Dropped another prospect this AM due to his social media presence...Actually glad I got to see the 'real' person before we offered him." This shows that coaches really do care what their future athletes are actually like. Also since coach Hand tweeted this, it is like a fair warning to other athletes in the future to be very careful with what they put on Twitter.
Twitter has its positives and negatives portrayed by all of these examples, but there is one important part to using Twitter in a positive manner. That is being able to filter what you put on there for everyone to see. People must be smart with what they post because there will always be people in society who will be judging the material you share with world. Just like in most college and professional sports, the athletes must never judge a certain race, sponsor a product unless they had been paid to do it, they must never show disrespect to their respective programs, and never show anything that their grandmother would be ashamed to see. This is a good rule of thumb for every Twitter user as it helps to create a more friendly Twitter where the spread of information is the overall outcome. Nobody wants to see drama on Twitter except teenage girls and boys.
Twitter is a huge force on todays society, and it’s not going away anytime soon. This is apart of the huge world of social media that started a little over a decade ago. The idea of communication with the entire world in a matter of seconds was not ever perceivable one generation ago, now riots in Egypt can be watched over Twitter on a live feed. This shows how much of an impact a device, such as Twitter, can have on the world that we live in. Without it, the modern world would be much slower and could possibly be less advanced. Twitter is a good tool for communication and news updates, but only if it is used correctly.
Corpus:
Tweet Science
More on Twitter, the Positives/Negatives and Sturgeon, Now Refinement of Sources Makes It Powerful
The Positives and Pitfalls of Social Media
Twitter: What Is It Good For?
The Positives and Negatives of Twitter: Exploring How Student-Athletes Use Twitter and Respond to Critical Tweets
Recruits Learn Positives, Negatives of Social Media Exposure
Positives and Pain of a Twitter Life
How Twitter has Changed Politics-and Political Journalism
Twitter is Becoming the First and Quickest Source of Investment News
Will Twitter War Become the New Norm?
Twitter, Other Social Media Outlets Causing Problems for Politicians
Sources Cited
"More on Twitter, the Positives/Negatives and Sturgeon, Now Refinement of Sources Makes It Powerful." Delusions of Adequacy. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 20
