Twitter is a powerful media platform that enables free information sharing and rapid communication, but its reliability and sustainability have been called into question by issues of misinformation and political intervention.
Social network services (SNS) have been a growing social issue in recent years. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. are words that we come across at least once a day in our daily lives. SNSs, which have been slowly growing on the Internet, have exploded in size since the popularization of smartphones. With smartphones, users can easily share information such as text, photos, and videos anytime and anywhere without time or space constraints. In response to this social trend, various SNSs have been developed to meet the needs and purposes of users.
Among them, Twitter is arguably the most influential service. Twitter is basically a way for users to post 140 characters or less to their own accounts. If you want to read someone else’s account, you can “follow” them to see their posts at any time. Twitter’s viral power comes from its retweeting feature. Retweets are a way to share a post with your own followers with a single click when you like what someone else has written and want to spread the word. Anyone can read a retweeted article without knowing the original author. If you think of Kevin Bacon’s six-step rule, you can see how Twitter’s ripple effect is huge.
It’s also interesting to note that Twitter is a great way to keep up with the world without having to watch the news. For example, if someone in Japan takes a video of their house shaking in an earthquake and posts it on Twitter, many people will see it immediately. Similarly, photos of trees being blown down by Hurricane Sandy in the eastern United States are tweeted in real time. In this way, Twitter can be a more reliable source of information than mass media articles, which are often biased or fabricated due to conflicts of interest. In fact, during the Olympic season, we’ve seen Twitter users freely share and share news about the Olympics that would otherwise be unavailable due to broadcasters’ exclusivity. Twitter has proven to be a more authentic way to reach the masses than mass media. Considering this, Twitter can actually give us a broader picture of society as a whole.
This freedom from traditional media makes Twitter seem like an ideal forum for public opinion, but it’s not all purely functional. As it matures, Twitter has seen an increase in political intervention and misinformation. Many politicians and corporations are already on Twitter, shaping public opinion, and users are unknowingly exposed to the opinions they create. We can also see that the overabundance of information is leading to more quantity rather than quality growth. This devalues each piece of information and risks drowning out quality and meaningful information. Given this transformation, some people have speculated that Twitter will eventually lose its luster and decline. In fact, Facebook, another promising social network, is currently not as popular as it once was, and its stock price is on the decline.
So, what can we, as Twitter users, do to keep Twitter from deteriorating and keep it a forum for public opinion? First, we need stronger regulation of those who spread false information. Some may argue that this infringes on the freedom of Twitter, but freedom without responsibility is not freedom at all. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the maturity and proper behavior of the public that makes up Twitter. It takes discernment to not take information lightly, to give credit where credit is due, to not post false information, and to be able to evaluate the validity of information. Ultimately, it is the public’s ability to self-regulate and maturely use Twitter that will sustain and evolve it. When these efforts are sustained, Twitter can become the ideal free media.
