Friday, February 11, 2011

Don't Blame Twitter!


The problem I see with this article is that it is blaming the media technology of Twitter for a problem that we can only blames ourselves for. I think that this is a problem because it is ignoring that fact that people need to learn how to properly interpret media messages so that they are not manipulated by them. The answer is not to get rid of the media, we simply need to get our own acts together. The article I chose came from the MN Daily and is about the author's desire to remove twitter from the media scene because he thinks it takes away from the depth and breadth that other sources offer.


http://www.mndaily.com/2011/02/02/unfollowing-twitter-revolution
While solely relying on a source like Twitter for your news may be a bad idea, the same goes for any news source. From my understanding of the short article, there is a very clear undertone that is playing Twitter as the bad guy. However, I think that this is the wrong approach. In order to be most informed about any news-related item it is very important to have a variety of sources, Twitter being more than acceptable. I'm not discrediting the fact that Twitter-based news reports have the tendency to be sensationalistic, but I think it is the viewer's job to decipher all of the information provided in our digital world. As citizens, I believe that it is our responsibility to not simply believe everything that is put in front of us, there are too many sources to pick one and think it's true or the best. As media continues to advance with technology and science, it will become even more important for those exposed to it to have the ability to interpret it without being manipulated. To simply cast Twitter aside is to ignore a perfectly good news source. People's inability to interpret its messages properly is not a fault of its own.

3 comments:

  1. Is there an issue under this: the structural limits of specific media (character limits and real-time speed of Twitter)?

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  2. I completely agree with you...however, I can't count the number of times my "tweets" have been misinterpreted and I offended someone. Its no fun, so I see where this article is coming from.

    You lay a lot of blame on the readers, is there anything twitter could do to solve this problem? I know other social-network/news-feed sites offer more options one can fill out to add to the context of a post. (ex: mood you were in when you posted it, emoticons, etc...)

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  3. @Robin: I think there are a few issues, though I'm not sure about what kind of severity they hold. I think character limits can make it hard to convey a full message for those who struggle with being concise or may be inexperienced with the Twitter structure. I think that the real-time speed can cause issues with information being spread too quickly before anything is actually verified. I think it leaves a lot of opportunity for gossip to spread, and we all know how gossip works; at first it is a whisper and two days later it is the truth, regardless of the truth.

    @AMardell: Potentially...the issue I have with readers is mainly that they are uneducated and don't know how to 'properly' read Twitter posts. That being said, perhaps they could offer some information on how to use Twitter with utmost efficiency?

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