Research Analysis : Twitter And Its Impact On The 21st Century

In the article “I Tweet, Therefore I Am,” author Peggy Orenstein criticizes the problems associated to the distractions of social media sites such as Twitter. The author introduces her article by describing her relaxing Sunday morning with her daughter. The author then quickly recounts her sense of urge to compress her beautiful day into a tweet, acknowledging that her “consciousness had spin off and was observing the scene from the outside… [her] perfect oppurtunity to tweet.” Living in a fast-paced world like today, many people can agree that what we decide to share is ultimately determined by our fantasies of what we think people should see, know and hear for the

Proclaimed as the hottest company since Google and Facebook, Twitter introduced a revolutionary micro-blogging service in 2006 that allowed users to spread and share short messages of 140 characters (“tweets”) with friends and strangers subscribing to follow their communication flow (as so called “followers”) in order to find out what is happening right now from any point of the globe.

The Internet has been changing the world since it is created. As a part of new media, social media is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. It has been helped to create a digital global village that 26% of the world’s population is using social media and the number is keep increasing. (Qualman, 2013) This essay will attempt to discuss how has the social media changed the public sphere, mainly focus on the improvement of public participation, social relations and information dissemination. Also Mainland China is taken as an example to show that social media enabling democracy in a developing country. Social media is also being used in good ways to spread information. There are some disadvantages to be analyzed, too. The issues like lack of privacy, social media violence and social media out of control will be discussed in this essay.

“People can take their time when posting information about themselves, carefully selecting what aspects they would like to emphasize (Gonzales 80).” By controlling what information and self-attributes to share with the online world, an individual may present an idealized version of self that would not align with societal perceptions in the face-to-face interactions. Furthermore, Gonzales notes that recent research in computer-mediated communications suggests that online self-presentations can alter self-perceptions (80). As Orenstein says, “I tweet, therefore I am.” The online presentations of self can become the reality, or idealized reality, of the

the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide...was itself a punishable offense” (Orwell, 65). In 1984, looking suspicious or emotional in front of a telescreen was dangerous and considered a punishable offense. In the present day, social media is the equivalent to the telescreens, it’s the means by which individuals display themselves publicly. Posting the wrong thing on social media can be dangerous because if it’s public, it’s exposed to open interpretation. Jon Ronson from the New York Times Magazine published an article giving a few instances of people sharing controversial postings on social media and receiving a major backlash for it. Specifically, Ronson talks about a woman named Justine Sacco who tweeted, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” Upon her arrival, she realized this tweet was trending. She was judged by her friends and family, and the tweet generated threats and harassment on the internet from the general public. As a result, Sacco lost her job and was scared to leave her own home. This incident is an example of the reasons why, in this day and age, we must be very careful with what we share publicly. Social media exemplifies of how our world is becoming like 1984. Any misstep in our words or actions can wind us

Twitter is the world’s number one go-to social media platform and, even though it is just words on a screen, it has the power to change lives for better or for worse. This social media platform is a powerful tool when someone knows how to use it correctly, but powerful tools can just as easily be misused. Mona Eltahawy’s primary theme in her essay “Twitterholics Anonymous” is that Twitter has both positive and negative effects on anyone who uses or follows the social media platform. “Twitter connects me to everything I care about and Twitter is ruining my life.” Just as this platform can connect people across the world, Eltahawy clearly demonstrates the toll it can take on one’s body and mind. The author of “Twitterholics Anonymous” brings up a unique conversation about Twitter’s effects on the world’s population that could inadvertently revolutionize how the world views and uses social media.

Moving forward, social media has been a major convenience and reward to virtually everyone. On an individual basis, social media allows friends and family both near and far to communicate with one another. Also, businesses are flourishing through the use of social media. Advertising has never been easier. Horn (2013) states, “Our profession, unlike any time before, is demanding we become social media (…) experts” (1). Horn (2013) also states, “More than half of reporters (55 percent) use Twitter and Facebook to source stories” (1). Social media has greatly benefited business life and personal life.

The author Peggy Orenstein wrote the article, “I Tweet, Therefore I Am” in the New York Times Magazine to claim that people tweet for themselves because social media is important to them. It describes how people care about their own posts on twitter. Peggy Orenstein uses examples and creates an appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos to convince people that social media is important to us. She adds how anyone tries to post a tweet that is interesting enough to talk about on their page.

Relevance to audience: As users of social media you may not think that it can have a bad effect on your life or the lives of those around you. After listening to what I have to say today, will give you a new perspective on social media and the huge control that it can have peoples’ lives.

With so many people posting to social media what makes one individual stand out against the rest? There is always the chance that one doesn’t get the job they are looking for. All that time and effort that individual put into creating their image online reaped no reward, no money, and no health insurance. Regardless if one gets the desired job or not they have to look at everything it asks of them. Posting about everything and anything one does in a day takes a toll on one’s personal life. Sharing intimate details with sometimes millions of followers comes with risks. There starts to be a lack of privacy once one posts about every meal they make and every time they have a family get together. Still many are lured into this vicious cycle with the promise that someday they will have all the fame and fortune one could want.

On social media, I’m very cautious with what I put out there for a multitude of reasons. Looking back at my last fifteen tweets, about eight of those tweets are Van Meter related, which most tend to be about success of Van Meter sports(final scores of our games or news coverage). Two of the tweets are happy birthday tweets, wishing Connor Guess and Drew Gordon a happy birthday, and I inserted a few pictures of us to go along with it. The remaining five tweets are sports related, with four of them being motivational stories about athletes, and the other one referencing the video game Madden. The other thing that stands out to me on social media now that I think about it, is who I am following and who is following me. I can honestly say that a good amount of people that follow me, around

These days it seems that the Internet, a post-modern medium, something so complex and vital to our society as being reduce to a mere antiquity of personal feuds and interactive relationships (or at least the satisfaction of what seems like a relationship) between people. The rise of social media applications like Twitter and Facebook allows people to voice their opinions to wider audience, creating a pluralist, postmodern medium in which questions raised about the impact of mediated relationships have surely increased. What is particularly interesting about Twitter (and to a lesser extent Facebook) is the newfound proximity we ‘normal people’ have to modern

Walk into a library, you have a computer, you are most likely carrying a phone, at home, you most likely have a computer, laptop, tablet, or even all three. This shows that we have social media access at the tip of our fingers, making it so easy to open up the site or app and just type out a phrase or paragraph, letting hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions, of people know what you think. Back then, it was harder to let the nation know what you were thinking, and it took even take months before everyone knew, versus today, where the nation might know by the end of the day, and it’s because of this that companies regulate what their users are posting, attempting at keeping the online world free from threats, hate, harmful words, and more. Rutenberg quotes Jeffrey Goldberg as he says, “At a certain point I’d rather take myself off the platform where speech has become so become so offensive than advocate for the suppression of that speech” (2). Twitter also said that “everyone on Twitter should feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, but behavior that harasses, intimidates or uses fear to silence another person’s voice should have no place on our platform” (Rutenberg 2).

The world has never before been connected as much as it is today. One’s ability to communicate through various mediums is rapidly advancing, and this is much thanks to social media.

The term ‘social media’ has become a broad-term to describe a large number of online systems that serve as a platform for the generation, and distribution of user-generated content. Social media creates a virtual social space, where a large number of users come together and interact with one another. These interactions can be either structured, such as responses that are moderated on blogs, semi-structured, such as a discussion between an extended network on Facebook, or unstructured, such as the anarchial functioning of Twitter.