Twitter and the media

The new big thing on the internet is the social media website Twitter. Twitter allows you to give a brief blurb of text. It provides the question simply, “What are you doing?” It allows you to type 140 characters and you can say anything you would like. You can post a link, give an opinion, direct message someone or actually say what you are doing at the moment. This is an obvious result of our society’s tendency to have a short attention span. Many people do not like to read long blogs or article (let alone books) so they opt for the short and sweet tweet. However, as simple as it sounds, I believe this can have some adverse side effects in our culture.
We live in a material possession seeking society which runs on consumers as the life-blood. Twitter clearly caters to this need for quick consumption and tossing aside and I believe it enhances it as well. There are definitely some promising possibilities with social media, though. They just need to be utilized correctly and responsibly. Major media has caught on the trend and you would be hard-pressed to find a newscaster, show or station that does not have its own Twitter profile (and Myspace, Facebook, etc.). On networks such as CNN, MSNBC and FoxNews they even dedicate a lot of time to showing people’s reaction to certain stories or subjects in the news. This can be a great thing if used correctly because, as we know, many opinions are not accurately or fully portrayed on certain issues. But the fight for ratings between these 24-hour news stations is so heavy that some stations are taking it a little overboard. CNN had a television in their studio just for showing tweets and Myspace responses to the issues with a person dedicated to presenting it. Many times the responses picked are incoherent, ignorant and uninformed. The obvious potential use for this is to start a discussion about social issues with a wide group of people and opinions. The problem comes on trying to find people who actually have well formulated opinions and arguments. Most of the time dedicated to Twitter on these news stations is a waste of air time that could be used for actual media coverage of more important topics. Also, it is hard to get a point across in 140 characters.
In an article by William Bradley at the www.huffingtonpost.com, he explains that Twitter is hurting an already weak media system which we have in the U.S. “Spend too much time watching American cable news, where you can literally see faddish and frequently groundless political views become a faux consensus in a matter of hours as folks rather hysterically talk themselves into a viewpoint that is totally at odds with political reality outside the echo chamber, and that's already clear….Then add something like Twitter, and the hysteria can reach a fever pitch, with commentators, conventional and unconventional alike, tweeting feverishly away into the ether, hoping their info-bleeps capture a moment's attention.” He goes on to explain that as people’s attention spans get lowered, people get more anxious and their brains are affected.
We have enough kid’s with attention deficit disorder in this country to indicate a problem with this sort of media. I believe that as our attention span lowers, the harder it is to learn and utilize our memory because we do not use it as often. We need to have an open discussion about the future of social media and how it can be used responsibly for changing the way we interact, especially with media. And the conversation needs to involve a bit more than 140 characters.

Source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/the-trouble-with-twitter_b_172366.html