Twitter is a social media platform for all who seek utmost current information. Twitter operates by providing a curated feed to your liking. The boundless options to connect with users include, creating posts, retweeting, liking, commenting, and direct messaging, as well as other additional features like saving a draft, adding photo/video, and even voice recordings. This is one of my favorite social media platforms for its versatility, and foremost contemporaneous information. Often you'll find content on activism, sports, music, comedy, political news, celebrity scandals, and so much more. This platform encourages communication in various different ways, professional or casual. However, Twitter is a continually developing platform, innovating and improving its features constantly, for better inclusivity and optimism.
Twitter has several features to shape communication, and give users an optimized expirence for viewing content. Direct messaging, commenting, and liking posts allow you to engage with other users on the platform. When creating a post, Twitter asks “What's Happening?”, prompting you to discuss something relevant in the current moment. One feature in particular lets you create a poll for others to vote on. This corresponds with one of the overall themes Twitter is going for; engaging and promoting conversation and/or debate about a certain topic. For example, the frivolous ongoing debate of whether pineapple goes well on pizza has gone viral over the years. Users could post a poll asking the nonsensicle question, “Do you like pineapple on pizza?” and followers can engage with it, offering insight on users opinions’. This shapes user interaction in a distinct way that most platforms don't offer.
The search and Trending page on Twitter is my personal favorite for staying up-to-date on everything from politics, to celebrity scandals and memes. The Twitter algorithm detects the amount of times users collectively mention a certain topic or hashtag, and tallies them up to appear on the trending page, starting with #1 most trending. For viral news, Twitter curates stories from all news outlets about the topic for you to consume and have your own thoughts and opinions about. This shapes communication to be current. One representation of this is when the dreaded pandemic hit the news. I first found out about it through Twitter, and I was able to see other users' opinions on it. Since then, I have been kept in the loop using Twitter's very own “COVID-19” tab on the trending page, designed to keep users aware of recent CDC guidlines as they change.
This platform is a useful place to find communities within a certain niche. I enjoy staying informed on pressing political and activist issues, commenting my own thoughts and opinions about specific matters. There are many other communities that incorporate content that I personally enjoy, such as astrology, feminism, and so on. Accounts that post usually in these genres, I find to be informational, while also funny and interesting. However there are many other users that post within a certain genre, allowing users to find their own curated content to discuss. K-pop is a prominent, nearly department, of Twitter that has an army of fans, often making its way into the trending page. The hashtag #KpopTwitter was mentioned 6.7 Billion times in 2020, reaching a new world record, according to YeonJeong Kim.
Sometimes, I find certain things about Twitter to be annoying. I can't dislike content with a simple button like I can with a like button, and so far YouTube is the only platform that has this feature. In order to indicate that I don't like something I see, I have to create a post about it or comment on it. I think this is a strategic way for Twitter users to communicate why they don't particularly like something, and in doing so justify why they don't like it, opening up conversations on all ends. I have found that Twitter is a platform where a lot of debate happens, where users take advantage of the 240 characters allotted to dispute with another user about a disagreement, or even just to rant about something. Since 240 characters is sometimes insufficient for explaining in depth, Twitter launched “threads”, designed for users to create multiple posts all-in-one.
With users' inclination to post misunderstood, or outright false claims, Twitter has confronted the spread of misinformation with its rules and guidelines. The platform has made an effort to report non-factual evidence and has gone as far as banning users from the platform who violate these terms. The notorious Donald J Trump, known for spewing unbelievable amounts of Tweets, filled with completely ignorant agendas and blatantly wrong data to his uneducated, cult-like followers. The spread of misinformation is detrimental to news as a whole, and Twitter took rational action, and continues to fact-check relevant, and misunderstood subjects. Recently, a TikTok video displayed a girl sticking a magnet to her arm after receiving the Covid-19 vaccine, suggesting that magnetic metal is present in the shot. Following this viral video, Twitter released a statement, “The ingredients of COVID-19 vaccines do not contain magnetic materials, according to scientists and medical professionals.”
[As seen below, click photo to view Twitter source]
As this screenshot shows, people are commenting about the absurdity of the notion that vaccines are part of a larger government scheme. Twitter provided factual news and evidence debunking these claims, shaping users to engage with factual, evidence-based news. This also further demonstrates that Twitter shaped its users to talk about current events.
One feature I recently learned about is the audio feature that lets you record your voice and post it. As an able-bodied user, this isn't particularly useful for me as it is just a cool new feature. However, it is resourceful to the blind and low-vision community. However, Twitter faced backlash from it’s photosensitive users deeming the light flashes (designed to be eye-catching when users post audio) could cause seizures among those with epilepsy or other photosensitive disorders. In general, Twitter works hard at being inclusive among the disabled community with its various features such as CamelCasing, (a new layout for hashtags) designed to have a capital letter with each word in a hashtag, making hashtags easier to read. Also, Twitter has recently added captioning to videos, and the platform is compatible with Apple accessibility features, (VoiceOver, AssistiveTouch, Smart Invert, and Switch Control) as well as Android’s comparable features. An obvious issue with Twitter is that it is only available to those who own a mobile device or computer, confronting the idea that those who can't afford such things can't stay on top of information in the fast-acting ways Twitter delivers.
Twitter, overall is an online space that shapes communication to be timely, distintive to a certain community, informative, and non-biased and accurate. Additionally, they have implemented resourceful elements to the platform to ensure all users have equitable opportunities to communicate, regardless, Twitter should continue to expand with its disabled community as needed. There are some things I dislike about this platform, but the aspects I like far outweigh the bad, and I will continue to use Twitter as a platform to connect with others for years to come.
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