COMS340

Social networking is arguably at the center of present day life and culture. The open and collaborative nature of the Internet allows sites such as Twitter to connect individuals and share information in real-time. The innovations of social networking of the past decade have had a great impact on society as a whole. The ways in which people think, act and communicate have been digitized through the advent of Web 2.0. Society in general has become faster paced, more connected, and ultimately addicted to multimedia material – as proven by the popularity and far reaching scope of sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The participatory aspect of social media results in a crucial evolution of the nature of information, communication and society. Today’s widespread use of Twitter imposes critical changes upon social order by invoking shifts in individual identity, creating a distinct ubiquitous social media culture and altering how individuals exist in society.

Twitter defines itself as a “real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting.”[1] Twitter was created in March 2006 and has since become one of the top social networking sites on the web. In June 2011, Twitter’s official blog announced that 200 million Tweets a day were being published through the microblogging service – up from 65 million a day the year before.[2] The site revolves around small bursts of information known as Tweets, which are limited to 140 characters and allow the embedding of additional media such as photos and videos to supplement your text. They can be directed specifically at another user or can act as a general message chronicling the mundane activities of your everyday life. By creating a Twitter account you can select users to follow and subsequently let others follow you. This allows their Tweets to appear on your homepage and vice versa, keeping you connected to your friends and interests via real-time updates. Users also have the ability to share information published by others to indicate their approval or liking of the content by “retweeting” the Tweet on their own account. Additionally, posts can be sorted and searched categorically with the use of hashtags – words of phrases lacking punctuation and prefixed with a # sign (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 - The use of hashtags

Twitter enhances this social sorting by publishing up to date lists of “trending topics” on its web template, allowing users to discover what the Twitter universe is talking about at that moment (Fig. 2).While seemingly similar to Facebook – with the concept of friends, updates and media sharing – Twitter creates an immense community by removing the barriers imposed by friend requests. The unrestricted acts of following someone on Twitter and viewing tweets pertaining to trending topics ultimately makes the world smaller, connecting geographically dispersed strangers in an unprecedented way. However, what does this seemingly utopian technology imply with regards to the evolution of the individual and society amid a new cultural framework?

Fig. 2 - Trending topics November 30 2011

Individuals like to believe that social media has less of an influence on them than it does their peers. Personal feelings of invincibility to technologically imposed changes are common to our media saturated existence. Humans however are becoming increasingly intertwined with technology— particularly through social media— and are covertly shaped by their use. Twitter imposes two important changes upon individuals: in terms of the understanding of the body and in the ways in which they communicate. The concept of technological determinism refers to the idea that media and technologies determine our situation. It is supported by media theorists such as Friederich Kittler, who believes that media inevitably influences culture and invokes changes in the individual.[3] The technologies we use have the ability to influence how people interact, think and exist within this digital age. Marshall McLuhan identifies media as an extension of man.[4] In this view, technology is “an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies.”[5] As a social media platform, Twitter is an extension of human oral and written skills that changes reality and perceptions of the world around us. Tweets act as a substitute for mouths and vocal chords in their production and distribution of words. Twitter is not merely a web site – it is an extension of our brains, hands and mouths as it allows us to offer others insight to our thoughts and interests.

The concept of disembodiment also manifests itself within the interface of Twitter. Embodiment refers to the possession of a physical body and the experiencing of the world through that body. Twitter creates new virtual spaces and communities in which people can communicate, which ultimately causes a blurring of the boundaries of the self.[6] This disembodiment – the body being in one place and the mind functioning in another – is a fixture of Twitter’s interface. The very essence of this social media is the ability to share your every thought and feeling with whoever will listen. A new experience of the world is explored through cyberspace and the virtual connections people make through this media. With this disembodiment comes the contraction of the world as cyber-beings are packed into a new, torrent filled virtual space. Twitter facilitates disembodiment and has made it a central characteristic of most 21^st Century individuals. It is truly a main form of communication and expression for many people and acts as the main hub of interaction between previously inaccessible beings such as celebrities, politicians and corporations. By facilitating this disembodiment and acting as an extension of the self, Twitter begins to create what Donna Haraway calls a cyborgian identity. In its users, this social media creates a hybrid of man and machine, breaking down the boundaries between the physical and non-physical.[7] While Twitter essentially destroys our identities as physical individuals, it subsequently creates a non-hierarchical community in which contact with previously inaccessible entities is possible.

Fig 3.- Twitter interface

Twitter also affects the way in which people communicate. The use of the written word in informal communication has increased with the rise of technology. Phone calls and face-to-face meetings have been replaced with e-mails, text messages and Facebook posts. Twitter is no different, as it continues to encourage this trend of reverting back to text in our everyday interactions. It however restricts the use of the written word and promotes its coupling with multimedia. In talking about the conditions of writing, Kittler has said: “To record the sound sequences of speech, literature has to arrest them in a system of 26 letters […].”[8] Likewise, it can be said that in creating a Tweet, Twitter has to arrest them in a burst of 140 characters. Matthew Fuller identifies that technologies dealing with text posses an “underlying grammar”[9] and enunciative framework that impacts the writing they produce. In the case of Twitter, the 140 character limit on Tweets restricts users in their use of text. People are forced to carefully edit their posts and deliver them in a short and witty fashion. To make up for the lack of description or clarity that can arise in these short messages, links to photos, videos, websites and other multimedia material can be easily included in your Tweet. In catering to an information hungry society with short attention spans, the software produces the ideal user. While Twitter is seemingly an open and free means of communication, it is true that through this standardization of text, technology dictates how people communicate and express themselves. It can thus ultimately be understood that despite its impression of simply being a social media platform, it is a transformative tool with the ability to impose changes upon individual users in a powerful way.

At the center of Twitter lies the notion of connectivity. Its sole purpose is to create links between individuals and facilitate the sharing of information. As the realm of new media grows, so does the expectation of quick and effortless connection and communication. Over the past five years Twitter has created a distinct culture of connectivity. People today have come to expect all beings and things to somehow be technologically linked to the world. This new understanding changes what we as members of society expect from culture and how we define it. Prominent in this culture of connectivity is the concept of hypermedia. Ted Nelson classifies hypermedia as the system that links people to photos, videos and other external sites with the simple click of the mouse.[10] It is a way to conveniently show others what you have discovered on the Internet and allow them to experience it firsthand in the same way you have. The use of hypermedia is essential to the success of Twitter. The ability to expand upon your post and support it with what can be likened to a kind of modern primary source makes the Twitter community a place of discovery. The centrality of hypermedia to Twitter solidifies this culture of connectivity that has been introduced. It ultimately increases the individual’s need for a constant flow of information and provides countless points of access to this content.

Fig 4 -Taylor Swift connecting with fans through hypermedia

The culture of connectivity is also characterized by an unprecedented ability to interact with people of importance. Celebrities, politicians, CEOs and person can follow their favourite actor, MP or company in order to stay up to date on their latest news. Celebrities use Twitter as a tool to interact with their fans, often posting pictures from their private lives or links to their favourite music videos. Twitter has even become a source of celebrity news for magazines and gossip sites, acting as their primary sources and leads to stories - as seen in this People Magazine article on Ashton Kutcher. This truly exhibits Twitter’s power to transform culture, as a platform that consists of the most basic actions of composing text and inserting of hypermedia has become an essential link between different worlds and cultures. Jose van Dijck observes that in the current digital age “users have better access to networked media, enabling them to ‘talk back’ in that same multimodal language that frames cultural products formerly made exclusively in studios.”[11] This is relevant to Twitter in that Tweets are the universal language – anyone can communicate and forge connections via Tweet. As Twitter has become a type of cultural capital for celebrities, the ability of individuals to ‘talk back’ through the same means and participate equally in this cultural product is the ultimate manifestation of connectivity. Celebrities often retweet messages from fans, breaking down the communication barrier between stars and their followers. Participants are no longer mere passive recipients of culture. Interestingly, despite traditional cultural differences such as nationality, social class, occupation or generation, Twitter has succeeded in creating one massive and pervasive culture on the basis of connectivity and hypermedia.

21^st Century society can best be described as a digital age. Technology permeates most aspects of life and dictates how we conduct our daily activities. The prevalence of Twitter alters society and changes how individuals of the digital age exist within this society. A consequence of the aforementioned transformations of the individual and culture is the creation of what McLuhan calls the Global Village. Such a society is created by the current “instant electronic information movement”[12] that encompasses social networking sites. McLuhan describes this village as being “as wide as the planet and as small as a little town, where everybody is maliciously engaged in poking his nose into everybody else’s business.”[13] With its basic principle of openness, Twitter is the ultimate realization of the Global Village. Sharing is the essence of all social media, but Twitter in particular has the sole purpose of granting people a glimpse into the lives of others and is centered on the notion of being nosey. Twitter thus gives the impression of creating a small, intimate society in which individuals forge cyber-bonds. However, the Global Village is a virtual construction and its citizens are therefore digital beings. Alongside the culture of connectivity, Twitter’s Global Village creates a digital society in which boundaries between the public and private are blurred. Twitter ultimately changes societal norms and values, and causes the evolution of the nature of personal relationships. Staying connected no longer consists of making phone calls or going for coffee, rather it hinges on digital communication. Thus, our cyber-identities have become essential to our individual identities and strongly permeate society. As Twitter continues to build our Global Village, we as individuals adapt to this type of society by embracing cyber-connections and multimedia in our everyday lives.

Twitter causes a societal shift to a distributive network. It creates a range of autonomous social actors who communicate and interact free of hierarchal classifications. This gives individuals the opportunity to vocalize their opinions and ideas more effectively. The Internet itself creates this distributive framework, but Twitter promotes the concepts of openness and freedom of communication. With this we can identify the creation of a control society – a world that lacks a concrete center and in which control is spread out amongst users, or is “free-floating.”[14] While it is true that the Twitter interface applies certain restraints upon its users, the program does promote openness and decentralization. Individuals are presented with the opportunity to connect and share on their own terms. Through Twitter, users gain a sense of control over the media. They are able to participate in our technologically centered society and make connections in an unprecedented way. The Twitter community represents this distribution of power and control, resulting in a largely participatory society. The need to speak and be heard – even if no one is actually listening – has become a social norm with the rise of Twitter. Society as a whole has ultimately become more in control of itself, but has also become more demanding an impatient when it comes to exerting this control. We have come to exist as virtual voices who express themselves explicitly through the terms of technology.

Twitter poses a danger to society in that it creates a world defined by simplifications and fabrications. The parameters imposed upon users function in a way that alter the messages we send out and changes how we perceive information. In his discussion of cybernetics, Norbert Weiner calls attention to the important role of feedback mechanisms in the digital age.[15] He alludes to the fact that the machines we create and use are ultimately models of who we think we are as human beings. However, the concept of positive feedback leads us to understand that it is in fact the structure of the technology itself that is causing this simplification – we are only reinforcing it by partaking in social networking. This is evident in the way in which Twitter grooms the ideal user. Through the limitation of characters and the multimedia-centric interface, the Twitter promotes change within society. Individuals are able to simplify and edit their identity in Twitter’s online community. Users are given the opportunity to recreate themselves in this virtual world – who they follow, what they Tweet and the multimedia they share all contribute to the construction of a new identity. The positive feedback mechanism is ultimately creating a new type of society marred by a lack of complexity. In participating in Twitter culture, we are subjecting ourselves to the contraction of our society and its resulting simplicity. A lack of authenticity resonates as people begin to feel more comfortable expressing themselves in virtual communities rather than real ones. Present day society has ultimately become reduced to existing within the Internet and the role of the individual has come to be defined as a mere source of code in this digital community.

Twitter presents society with a very appealing and utopian-like structure. It promises free speech, liberal expression and unlimited connectivity in a simple package. Since its creation in 2006, it has succeeded in appealing to the masses and revolutionizing the nature of social networking. Twitter has however initiated many important transformations of the individual, culture and society. Technology has become a fixture in our every day lives and is vital to communication. Twitter personifies a true extension of man by acting as a tool for sharing information and creating connections. It has revolutionized the ways in which individuals communicate and has altered what we have come to consider important. Twitter has also become an integral part of modern culture. It has brought the possibility of connectivity to a new level and has increased our fascination with multimedia and hyperlinks. Twitter is much more than short, witty Tweets and updates. As McLuhan has said, the medium is the message.[16] As a medium of communication, Tweets, retweets and trending topics have resulted in the creation of a new, virtual layer of society in which connections are vast, communication is instant, and information is abundant. In this ever-changing society, one thing is definite – Twitter always has something to show you.

(Bibliography in following post)

[1] Twitter, About Twitter, 2011, 27 November 2011 <http://twitter.com/about>.

[2] Twitter, 200 million tweets per day, 30 June 2011, 27 November 2011 <http://blog.twitter.com/2011/06/200-million-tweets-per-day.html>.

[3] Friedrich Kittler, "Introduction," Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999) 1-19.

[4] Marshall McLuhan, "The Medium is the Message," Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964) 7-21.

[5] Marshall McLuhan, "The Gadget Lover," Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964) 45.

[6] Elaine L. Graham, "Nietzsche gets a modem: transhumanism and the technological sublime," Representations of the Post/Human (Manchester: Manchester University Presd, 2002) 154-175.

[7] Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the late Twentieth Century," Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991) 149-181.

[8] Kittler, 3.

[9] Matthew Fuller, "It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter," Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2003) 147.

[10] Ted Nelson, "Computer Lib / Dream Machines, 1974," Multimedia - from Wagner to Virtual Reality, ed. Randall Packer and Ken Jordan (New York: Norton, 2001) 158.

[11] Jose van Dijck, "Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content," Media Culture Society 31.1 (2009): 43.

[12] Marshall McLuhan, “The Global Village,” Video, 1968.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control," L'Autre Journal 1 (1991): 4.

[15] Norbert Weiner, "Men, Machines and the World About," The New Media Reader, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1954) 65-72.

[16] McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message.”

COMS340

Wednesday, 30 November 2011

Bibliography

Twitter: Changing the World in 140 Characters or Less