The Twitter Age (NFPW High School Communications Contest Second Place for Blog/Column)

May 4, 2014 by Paulitical | Leave a commentWhy short is the new long in political communications. 

by Joon Lee

Twitter. In 140 characters the website is able to sum up the hopes, desires, daily routines and ideologies of millions worldwide. If the latter half of the 1900s was the age of television, then the 21st century is the age of Twitter.

Marshall McLuhan once wrote that “the medium is the message.” Mediums of communication change with time and directly reflect our cultural philoso-phies and values. The emergence of Twitter as the dominant communication medium, therefore, is more than just a simple coincidence or a fluke in tech-nological advancement. It is instead a perfect reflection of the cultural zeit-geist of the information age.

Of course, it’s important to point out that the so-called “Twitter age” is still in its introductory phases. Although we are often lured by romantic stories of Twitter-fueled democratic revolutions, only around 16% of adults in the United States currently use Twitter. Nonetheless, the number of users is constantly growing, and that list now includes a number of influential fig-ures. 75% of heads of state have accounts on Twitter, with many using it as a method to communicate with voters and supporters.

What, then, makes Twitter a medium representative of our cultural values? And what does this suggest is the future of Twitter as a part of the demo-cratic process?

To look at this question, it’s important to first analyze some of the key func-tions of the platform. For one, Twitter is extremely brief: it caps expression at a paltry 140 characters. Twitter is also an interactive medium: instead of simply consuming information, Twitter encourages users to re-disseminate that information through the process of re-tweeting. It is, in short, a service where the act of sharing rules supreme. Finally, it is important to look at the uniquely Twitter-ian concept that is the hashtag. The hashtag allows multiple ideas to be consolidated and organized into one collective whole.

Let’s start with the 140 character limit. Twitter’s encouragement of brevity is a perfect representation of our society’s obsession with speed. The

growth of the Internet has transformed communication into an instanta-neous activity. Information is now expected to be shared in the quickest, most efficient manner possible. We are now flooded with so much data, text and information on a minute-by-minute basis that there is simply no time to fully process it all. It is, as Pew Research puts it, the age of “instant gratifi-cation and quick fixes”.

Twitter perfectly embodies this mentality. By limiting all posts to a few sen-tences, it strips down communication to its bare bones.

Twitter’s adoption into the political communications world, therefore, is in-teresting to examine. Politicians now interact with the public through 140 character bursts of information. Sure, this is an efficient and timely medium; it is now possible for politicians to communicate with the public in real time. However, the 140 character ceiling puts a severe limitation on what can be said.

As a medium, Twitter is fundamentally unfriendly towards details and com-plexity. Unfortunately, many aspects of the political system cannot be sim-plified into a 140-character Tweet.  Therefore, Twitter offers its users an in-complete and rather over-simplified view of politics. Furthermore, its shar-ing-based platform also serves as the perfect breeding ground for political misinformation. This raises some concern about Twitter, as access to accu-rate and well-balanced information is key to public engagement. How can a culture of public engagement be nurtured if we are not properly informed on the actions of our governments?

Of course, Twitter’s impact on democracy has also been positive. By now, everyone has heard the feel-good stories of Arab Spring revolutions orga-nized through Twitter. As mentioned earlier, Twitter encourages re-tweet-ing and sharing. Through hashtagging, it also groups together similar ideas and Tweets. These aspects of Twitter encourage group thought and group action. Sharing and hashtagging through Twitter allows for the conver-gence of similar ideas and individuals; furthermore, it allows for the rapid broadcasting of information across large number of people. This has made Twitter custom-tailored to be the medium of choice for revolutionaries worldwide.

Although Twitter-led group thought has supported revolutions and coopera-tive initiatives, it has also allowed for the emergence of mob mentality. Au-thor Joyce Carol Oates even compared Twitter to a “lynch mob”. I have al-ready written about the overwhelming impact of the Internet on democracy

in Korea, where Twitter has often fallen victim to vicious mob mentalities. Scapegoating and public humiliation – a process dubbed “witch-hunting” in Korea – has become extremely popular among Twitter users.

Such examples, however, are visible around the world. In Japan, the far-right neto uyo have used Twitter to share xenophobic and extremist opin-ions. In the United States, Coca Cola’s “America is Beautiful” advertisement led to a fierce backlash on Twitter, where masses of angered Internet users vented their racist and over-nationalist sentiments on the website. Encour-aged by hashtags such as #boycottCoke, xenophobia spread like wildfire across the Twitter community.

What Twitter presents to us, therefore, is an entirely new method of com-munication: one that is brief, social, and highly interactive. In a democratic political system, where communication is key, such a change has long-last-ing ripples. Twitter may encourage cooperation and revolution, but it has also allowed for vicious mob mentalities and misinformation to grow. Our future mission, therefore, will be nurturing an online culture where Twitter can be utilized as an effective tool for democracy.

Perhaps most importantly, however, Twitter allows us to reflect as a society. Both its positives and negatives are all firmly rooted in the cultural and so-cial norms of our time. Looking back from the future, Twitter may indeed be the defining cultural artifact of our decade.