Twitter: What is it good for! Absolutely Nothing?

Twitter is :

 A short burst of inconsequential information.

OR

Chirps from birds.

(Cross 2011, p. 58)

This is exactly what Twitter is, short status updates made up of 140 characters or less.  Twitter has evolved using other technologies such as the first mobile phones that could use up to 160 characters in a text and other social networks such as Facebook and Myspace.
 
Though is it all inconsequential information?

 Well most of it is, such as the aesthetically pleasing photos of your breakfast.  However, Twitter is also being used for political, social and cultural reasons.   An example of political usage is during President Obama’s election campaign he used Twitter as a platform to connect with potential voters.  It gave him a distinct advantage and was a first for politics.

Past reports have also linked people to using Twitter in a crisis.  In November 2008, 10 terrorists took over 2 hotels in Mumbai.  The television feeds were shut down as the terrorist were using it for their own purposes and so the victims in the hotel tweeted for help.  They were able to provide up-to-the-minute updates on the situation as it unfolded (Cross 2011, p. 58).  Twitter has also been used in other times of crisis; the earthquakes in both Haiti and Japan and the Victorian bushfires. 

The situation with Japan is actually quite close to my heart my host sister, Nami lived in one of the affected areas. Through social networking she let us know that she was OK.
 

When using Twitter you’re not constrained to a computer, it’s portable as long as you have a smart phone device hence why Nami could tell me she was OK.  On a global scale Twitter is available in 6 languages; English, French, Japanese, German, Italian and Spanish and is available in 26 countries for mobile device users.  This can lead to the exclusion of some audiences such as people that don’t own mobile devices (older generations).

Some countries would rather social media sites did not exist.  The Iranian government attempted to cut off sites such as Facebook and Twitter to stop the flow of information in and out of the country to stop activists from communicating in regards to their protests.  Henry Jenkins, media scholar and theorist says that we’re living in a world of participatory culture ‘where we take media into our own hands, where we have the capacity to produce media, to share media’ (DMLResearchHub 2011).

So whilst we’re practicing using media i.e. posting photos of our breakfast, some of us go onto tackling major issues such as sharing protest information. And so where there is a will there is a way… Activists used proxy servers to get past this and used sites such as Twitter to communicate in real time to ex-patriots in America and other Western Nations (Acohido 2009). 

However, Twitter is primarily used socially and you can connect with friends at any time of the day.  As opposed to a text message Twitter’s major drawcard is that it is free.  I can’t say that I’m a regular user of Twitter but one of the main reasons I have a Twitter account is that I can ‘follow’ celebrities. 

One of my favourite celebrities is Xfactor judge, Demi Lovato.  Lovato has built a strong following of fans which she has affectionately dubbed ‘Lovatics’.  Demi tweets well throughout the day but she also ‘retweets’.  Just recently the Xfactor judge asked her ‘Lovatics’ to vote the contestant she was mentoring and ‘retweeted’ her followers messages, acknowledging them and making them feel special.      

So what next for Twitter? 

Will it be around forever? Or will it drop off the face of the Earth? Like Myspace did. 

There isn’t anything conclusive to say what the future has in store for Twitter and the organisation of Twitter certainly holds its cards close to their chest.  Though with the increase of people aligning together, in what theorist, Howard Rheingold calls virtual communities (people linked by their participation in computer networks) (ScottLondon, n.d.).   Twitter seems to be growing faster than ever.  So we’ll see.

Reference List

Cross, M 2007, Bloggerati, Twitterarti: How Blogs and Twitter are Transforming Popular Culture, Greenwood Publishing /group, EBL Ebook Library, viewed 7 December 2012.

Acohido, B, 2009, Iranian activists use Twitter, proxy servers to deliver news from the streets, The Last Watchdog, viewed 7 December 2012, http://lastwatchdog.com/iranian-activists-twitter-proxy-servers-deliver-news/

DMLResearchHub 2011, Media Scholar Henry Jenkins on Participatory Culture and Civic Engagement, 4 August, viewed 8 December 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZ4ph3dSmY

ScottLondon n.d., Book Review: The Virtual Community, n.d. viewed 8 December 2012, http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/rheingold.html

Talk To The Phone, I'm Not Home!

 

“Back in my day (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) we didn’t text people we used to just show up to their place or we’d use the land line”
(everyone over forty)

I’ve heard this dozens of times from parents, grandparents and elder co-workers.  They would then proceed to tell me about what the land line looked like with its spin dialer.   As I was born in ‘90s I do not remember a time without mobile devices (I also cringe when I hear the words “back in my day…”) though as I’ve grown up mobile devices have advanced in technology and become more prevalent in everyday life.  Before the smart phone was the humble flip phone with its push buttons as opposed to touch screens and applications.  Though I do miss a good game of ‘snake’, mobile devices have advanced combining other technologies such as the digital camera, the mp3 player and the internet.   The smart phone is seen as a revolutionary device though it has evolved from other technologies (Haddon, L & Green, N 2009). 

My phone saves me time I can send and receive emails for work and texts are quicker than calling.  I can connect with my friends at any hour of the day with social networking applications such as facebook and instagram.  My phone often takes better quality photos than a digital camera and I can directly post them to social networking sites. 

In many ways my phone is also my security blanket.  When I’m on a night out and I’m walking back to my car I feel safer with my phone being there.  I’ll admit that when I go to a friend’s place I’ll text them to let me in.  I’ll call if they don’t answer but my last resort is actually knocking!  To be honest knocking actually makes me feel apprehensive.   

I personally have an android smart phone that I have a love/hate relationship with.  I have identified a pattern that whenever I’m lonely or bored that I send a text or I connect to social networking sites  and though I’m communicating with people it often makes me feel more alone than when I started.  I was very interested listening to psychologist, Sherry Turkle’s TED talk ‘Connected, but alone’ and I identified strongly with a few of the points she made.  Turkle (2012) mentions ‘we’re alone but we’re afraid of intimacy’.  Does this explain my apprehension with the front door?  That knocking and greeting someone face to face is too intimate? 

Turkle (2012) goes on to say that ‘being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved’. We connect with our devices when we’re lonely as we don’t how to deal with solitude.  In the past I have made concerted efforts to be ‘in the moment’ with friends having dinner, at board game nights, at parties only to be met with their mobile device beeping away with every text, facebook comment, etc .  It’s disconcerting that they are physically in your presence but really they’re consumed in their virtual world.  Our use of these devices is distancing ourselves from others and is actually making us more alone. 

So I’m putting a little challenge out there for both myself and everyone else to live ‘in the moment’, gain a little bit of independence and reduce the usage of mobile devices…well at least whilst we’re at dinner.    

 

References

'DIY Dinosaur iPhone Dock Roarr...'[image], Craziest Gadgets, viewed 1 December 2012 http://www.google.com.au/imgres?hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1920&bih=911&tbm=isch&tbnid=J19V0f2A4o9sgM:&imgrefurl=http://craziestgadgets.com/2010/01/27/nes-controller-dress/&docid=L7Q3_mM1zAW2eM&imgurl=http://craziestgadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/diy-dino-iphone-dock.jpg&w=490&h=422&ei=_pO5UKWCJ5GviQei4YGABA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=2&vpy=116&dur=1883&hovh=208&hovw=242&tx=59&ty=102&sig=111375401927617921527&page=1&tbnh=135&tbnw=153&start=0&ndsp=54&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:81

Haddon, L. and Green, N. 2009, Mobile Communications: an introduction to new media, EBL Ebook Library, Berg, viewed 30 November 2012.

Turkle, S 2012, Connected, but alone? TED Conversations, viewed 26 November 2012, http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html.