(This post was adapted from an essay for Gateway Media Literacy Partners, Inc.)
Look around, and look closely. Everywhere, from home to school, work to play, we’re witnessing a disturbing change in America, 140 characters at a time.
That change, heralded by the advent of social media, and the far-reaching, ever-expanding microblog platform Twitter in particular, demands we satisfy ourselves immediately with digital communications, telling our networks of virtual “friends” what we’re doing minute by minute, and expecting the same in return.
Evidence of this abounds as people meander down busy sidewalks with heads bent and eyes focused on the mobile devices in their hands; as pairs and groups in coffee shops, restaurants and other social settings hunch over their technology instead of engaging face to face; as car and truck drivers zoom past effecting the same debilitating pose behind the wheel. Twitter has attracted an audience of well over 500 million people — a number roughly equivalent to the 24 most populous nations combined. They’re tapping out an estimated 3,000 “tweets” per second, as of late 2011. And America tops this tweeting set, constituting about 30 percent of all Twitterers.
We could write off this behavior as endemic to a social species requiring engagement to survive and thrive. But such time-consuming, attention-diverting devotion to information that’s variously pertinent and pedantic instead removes us from society, inserts more space between ourselves and what we believe matters, and achieves the opposite of what we had hoped to accomplish through our amazing digital devices.
What would it take to disrupt this spreading inattentiveness before we’re reduced to letting technology do all the talking for us? Analysts say a refined Twitter temperament that fosters mature social networking is essential to sounding literate online, and the core curricula of that literacy can be boiled down to three R’s:
Restraint — We perceive the window through which we view the Internet as something akin to a one-way mirror when in fact it’s two-way, with potentially thousands of eyes peering back at us at once. Couple that with social media, which entices users to give up details about themselves to bolster their online “brand,” and little about us remains to the imagination.
Regardless, many Twitter users tweet every thought they have every minute they have them. They wax lengthy on food and fashion choices, spill secrets and tell lies, and they do these things either unaware of or indifferent to their network’s varied interests. The result: They lose followers and their networks shrink.
The best tweeters are not so random. Sree Sreenivasan, chief digital officer at Columbia University, says he waits six full minutes between tweets to ponder what he’s saying, how he’s saying it, and the possible reception from his followers. The alternative is a message that misses the mark and bruises his brand.
“I delete much more than I tweet,” he said during a speech to the Society of Professional Journalists in September.
Research — Award-winning writer and St. Louis native Maya Angelou once said, “When you know better, you do better.” If only the Twitterverse were as insightful.
Instead, Twitter’s mix of immediacy and intimacy have the power to trump good sense. And because tweets are capable of circulating outside user networks, provided that the network's members retweet them to their own audiences, users tend to announce rather than report, hoping their personal knowledge, or wit and wisdom, carry enough water to grow their networks.
But proven knowledge — the kind supported by embedded Web links — yields more fruit because its presence demonstrates the sender’s diligence and effort to sound authentic. Like quotes and facts in a newspaper article, Web links pointing to legitimate and respected information sources help shore up the authority of tweets, and bolster the social media credibility of the sender.
“It’s not just about knowing how,” says noted social critic and modern media analyst Howard Rheingold. “It’s about knowing how and knowing who knows who knows what. ... Know-how is where the difference lies.”
Reciprocity — Social media’s best quality appears in its name. We’re drawn to tools such as Twitter because they’re both personal and public; some part of each of us seems woven into every exchange, intended or not. Moreover, Twitter’s trait of easy accessibility to anyone who uses the service encourages Twitterers to reach beyond their circles of close friends for networking with anyone who sports vast reserves of knowledge and experience.
But to get real value from Twitter, value must be exchanged.
“I think successful use of Twitter means knowing how to tune the network of people you follow, and how to feed the network of people you follow,” Rheingold says. “... If you don’t put out, you don’t get back.”
Digital marketing analyst Mike Calloway adds that “one of the greatest benefits of being part of a social network is staying up to date on all of the current events and updates. By providing your audience with information that is relevant and popular, you give yourself and your brand a distinct advantage.”
And when sharing relevant and popular content, “try to share great information that people can find only from you. ... Of course, other people will share some of the same information as you, but you should be a great hub of information that no one but you could provide.”
