Why You Should Be on Twitter

By Chuck Tryon, AlterNet. Posted March 4, 2009.

As new communication technologies emerge, it is not uncommon to see articles or essays bemoaning how the new technology will destroy or damage communication as we know it, that a tool will lead to illiteracy, narcissism or whatever social ill might be haunting society at any given time.

Twitter, if we accept Alexander Zaitchik's reading published on AlterNet, is poised not only to dumb down discourse to levels seen only in Mike Judge's hilarious dystopian comedy Idiocracy but also to produce a narcissistic, infantilized public concerned only with broadcasting to the world every banal idea that comes to mind. And, just for good measure, Zaitchik takes pains to remind us that Twitter is not journalism.

Zaitchik is not alone in complaining about Twitter. Rob Horning, writing for Pop Matters, complained that the microblogging service is harming meaningful social relationships. Television quipmeisters Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have recently mocked the microblogging service (while I was working on this very article, in fact), suggesting that the site has achieved a new level of visibility, even while becoming an easy target for pundits ready to mock the latest platform for self-broadcast.

Twitter, for those readers who aren't aware of it, is a microblogging tool that allows users to submit 140-character "tweets," either from their computer or via text message. Many Twitter users have also synchronized their Twitter posts to their Facebook status updates.

Most Twitter users follow any number of others and develop a group of "followers," who have access to their status updates. In essence, it is a flexible tool for communicating short bits of information with others in your social network. It can be used to update friends on your day, to contact conferencegoers about a gathering at a local bar, or to link to articles or blog posts you find interesting.

Because Horning and Zaitchik's columns underestimate the potential social uses of Twitter, I think it's important to challenge some of the major arguments that they raise.

As others have pointed out, articles that complain about Twitter typically focus on the content of individual tweets rather than focusing on those tweets in a specific context. It would be similar to denigrating conversation by pulling out individual pieces of dialogue rather than seeing how conversation involves a variety of practices: connecting with others, sharing ideas, linking to blog posts, participating in mini-memes, or whatever.

In fact, these conversations can cultivate what Leisa Reichelt came to refer to as a form of "ambient intimacy" -- the ability to get to know others who might otherwise remain acquaintances. In this regard, Twitter may not function as a broadcast medium as much as it serves as a quick relay service for sharing ideas, thoughts and concerns with others who have similar interests, both locally and at great distances. These practices typically follow the formula, articulated by Barbara Ganley, that we "blog to reflect, Tweet to connect."

Quoting "bad" tweets also misses another key point about the medium. By identifying bad tweets, Zaitchik seeks to discredit the argument offered by Clive Thompson that Twitter is a "literary form" analogous to an "American haiku."

I'm not really interested in making the claim that Twitter is a form of poetry, but Zaitchik's move of identifying poorly written, banal tweets holds the genre to a false or irrelevant standard: just like there may be tweets that don't match the prose style of Hemingway or Faulkner, not all poems are Great Works of Literature (and to be fair, Faulkner may never have written a single sentence of less than 140 characters, so that's not the best example, but you get the idea).

But I would argue that there is at least some benefit in thinking about the constraints created by Twitter. Writing with such limitations forces me to be as precise as possible. Even if we don't buy the argument that Twitter is a form of haiku, it is a written genre in its own right, one that potentially opens up conversations about other forms of writing. In fact, as University of Texas, Dallas emerging media scholar David Parry points out, Twitter is surprisingly effective in teaching students to reflect on the rules of written communication.

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Chuck Tryon is an assistant professor of English at Fayetteville State University and is the author of the forthcoming book Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Digital Convergence (Rutgers University Press). He also blogs at the Chutry Experiment, and he invites readers to follow him on Twitter.

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