How Has Twitter Changed Communication - Research Paper Example

Task Introduction Twitter is responsible for revolutionary impacts on human communication. The existence of Twitter has revolutionary altered customary or subject cultures in means of communication. This paper states research results analyzing micro blogging’s use of semiotics as a method of word-of-mouth for division of user opinions concerning Twitter. Micro blogs that exceed 150,000 posts having comments, opinions and ideas are analyzed. Investigation of the whole outlook of the use of semiotics in the micro blog messages, types of languages and the flow of constructive and de-constructive sentiments was done. Analysis of timing, content intensity of occurrence, and the range of use in semiotics in the students’ tweets for curriculum change, is carried out using the approach of case study. The findings of the research were that about 40% of the tweets were positive about study groups conducted. Of the study groups, micro blogs about 42% had semiotic expressions about study group sentiments. In these, more than 60% were encouraging and the rest were posting critics about the study groups. Analyzing the micro blogs use of semiotics for composition and organization, the language composition of tweets approximated the language patterns of natural linguistic expressions. Findings show that, semiotics’ use in micro blogging is a tool used online for students’ word of mouth expressions. A discussion that schools should use the micro blogs as part of their education curriculum corresponded to this fact. The definition of social network is: “Websites which enable persons to create a free or communal profile bounded by specific rules of a system, be able to see a list of other bloggers who they share something in common and be able navigate through their list of links and those created by others bloggers within the structure”. The temperament and structure of semiotics usually varies from one website to another. (Boyd D, 3). For a website to be developed, collaboration and the community are extremely vital characteristics and are the prime features of virtual reality and social network. These combined with the ever- present online internet access, people who were at some point had parallel lifestyles and cultures are constantly connected. An enquiry concerning the overall effect of these social networks platforms has to be done. This paper uses semiotics to investigate the bond between students and the administration in improving the level of study groups in an institution. Given that twitter has very distinct features and characteristics, it has potential to have an impact on relations, which is a key factor to improvement in students study groups and their grades in a subject. There is no doubt that Social networks are unique because they let people convene strangers and helps users to control and increase the chances of their social networks noticeable through opening of profiles. The result is that, individuals who would not otherwise be friends are connected. More often than not, this is not the main reason but these connections are usually between “latent ties” of persons who have a connection outside the Web (Haythornthwaite). On a larger scale, people who are in the social networking systems are neither “networking” nor interested in looking for new friends, but rather are making contact with people who an inclusion of their elongated social network. The expressed social networks are stressed upon as being a significant organizing characteristic by being labeled “social network sites”. While the social network structures have a vast variety of technical features implementations, their strength of character consists of profiles that can be seen and display an expressed list of friends who also use the system. Profiles are usually distinct pages that a person can “proclaim into being” (Sunden, 17). Main body In the near past, people usually work from eight in the morning to five in the evening every day. Nights and weekends were usually left for family members, friends and having a good time. Nowadays, approximately twenty-three percent of American employees use telecommunication method to send and receive information. A majority, use social networks in the internet as a means to be linked to a fellow work mates and colleagues. The employees who are stuck in a workplace usually tweet and face book to connect with pals outside work. It has been noted that the link between job and home life are in a fast way deteriorating and social media and networks had better taken cover and prepared. Social networking mechanisms are just a tip of the iceberg and could even lead to methods of finding and communicating with others, who were never in our thoughts, thus whatever comes in play we can never rule out these tools. These tools may be of a greater good eventually, but we have to devise ways of coping with the tumbling limits these tools have affected and that includes writing again of social regulations as we proceed. The services rendered by social services expand the capacity of people we have a chance of ever coming across near inevitable possibilities. We are not relying on persons who live next to us, churches or even places of work to be social with or even desire. Getting to know other people via the internet is not a completely new thing dating back to the days of CompuServe and Bulletin Board Services. The prime advantage is that in recent times ways are more real-time. People communicate via face book and twitter through instantaneous messaging. This actually imitates dialogues and conversations that are face to face than those done via forums, message boards and even emails but its demerits are social gaffes and hacking of information. Social networking sites put users together through mind blogging aspects and contributions like religion, education, politics and parenting. This follows then that social disparities and social structures are set to emerge. Being purely human, we have no control over that! A CNN article on twitter, recently outline that twitter has changed communications in a number of ways. The possibility of information flowing fast was made possible. Even though news is spread in an extremely fast manner, rumor nowadays spreads fast on twitter. According to the article, real time news on a particular event is received by many people in the world. Nowadays twitter makes news literally skipping the traditional flow of the required channels to reach the desired target that then has a negative impact on News Media. Twitter removes the issue of famous person filter as it allows us to familiarize with celebrities as they really are below 140 characters with the knowledge not passing through media (Arceneaux & Schmitz). This may be a hard bone to crack to celebrities at times, but their miss-steps are by far seen. Have you ever thought of the picture people picked up about you when you made a scene? Was that the picture you wanted them to have of you or was it another slip of your unconscious? We are often ignorant of the messages we send and how the person in front of you interprets them. In the same way, we send messages about ourselves through pictures and words over the Internet, and most importantly via Twitter. The messages we send are oftentimes not thoroughly considered and are deciphered in a million different ways by receivers. We might be unaware of the misleading messages we send, however we cannot escape the truth of that people actually put stuff on Twitter that they might not be able or have the guts to tell face to face. Not only words, but also pictures are put up on Twitter that some would normally hesitate sharing. I rather get the feeling that people use Twitter as their shield, where they have no barriers of expressing their feelings. Maybe people feel protected behind the walls of Twitter, rather than talking directly to someone’s face, where they would be scared of getting a punch in their face. Twitter has brought about thought leaders. The ‘thought leaders’ are individuals who did not have an audience but have used twitter to get one. Their lack of audiences in the past signified that they had no one to put their points across but in recent times, these individuals usually pull a mammoth crowd as followers through twitter. Twitter has strengthened “second screens” as in the sense that people nowadays do not primarily watch televisions solely. As a show, proceeds the twitter subscribers will be chatting in the background. Events and series aired in the screens like Desperate Housewives and the Superbowl are now social events but not solitary events. Conversations are now oversimplified because statements worth 140 words are used hence one needs to simplify his or her sentence by use of semiotics. Individuals would have to go back and give a clarification to their statements. This fact has raised a cause of disagreement if twitter has enhanced communication or not. Luckily, there are those who we have met that can put across a point with even the current word limit in twitter. Research Methodology Research on twitter in a given institution for the purpose of education, was conducted and then analyzed. The research was done to find out what effect the use of semiotics for the purpose of education in twitter had on grades. The analysis showed that semiotics use in Twitter for educationally relevant purposes had an affirmative effect on the students’ results. There was no pre-existing diversities between the parties on high school GPA, portraying that the parties were equal in requisites of educational ability. Twitter Activity Analysis It is believed that, in comparing the results analyzed linguistically from this experiment will give insights of the configuration of the semiotic tweets. (Jansen & Spink) The analysis of tweet content implicated that scholars were encouraged and engaged to each other by the use of semiotics. In manners that occasionally occur with pre-health freshmen students at the institution, scholars were dynamically involved in thoughtful and individual conversations about the themes talked about in asset books. These conversations took long even days as the scholars left the site and then logged in to find an answer to a previous question thus continue with chatting. Examining the upper-class students, showed that they were involved in questioning their fellow friends about academic problems they needed help with. Therefore, after this examination, study groups were set up for Chemistry and Biology. The result was that a number of students were happy about knowledge through study groups. With administrative help and encouragement, the scholars formed their initial study community for Chemistry. On meeting the students, they then formed subsequent study groups independently. These groups increased in the due course of the semester and expanded to even other subjects of choice. Implications were: The outcomes prove that Twitter can be deployed to involve students in methods that are vital for their educational and psychological growth. There was enhanced contact between students and the administration by providing a way for getting in touch with their technological lifestyles. The deployment of twitter protocol gave rise to cooperation and coordination among scholars in that they used the network to question about the first year seminar course and the other subjects. There was collaboration on the service educational projects through the tweeter feeds thus providing emotional well-being to each other and developed real time study groups. The twitter assignments and experiences enhanced active scholarship as the students were helped to relate the syllabus material to their own encounters by use of semiotics both within and outside of the school. The use of twitter allowed provision of immediate feedback to students in their homework and a wide variety of queries and problems they encountered. For example, a number of scholars tweeted that they found it hard viewing a video online that was necessary for the course and in a spun of ten minutes there was feedback to the solution of the problem. The greatest benefit to use twitter this way was that the administration was able to capitalize on time on task. The discussions were held only once a week but it was able to enhance discussions build a strong and learning group among the scholars. Twitter was used to pass across high prospects in the scholars’ academic work, co- curricular activities and service learning projects. Lastly the use of twitter, represented reverence for diversity because, in addition to conversing diversity problems in the twitter feed, students who would not have taken part in class were encouraged to take part online. Conclusion Twitter has lead to revolutionary impacts on human communication. The existence of Twitter has revolutionary altered customary or subject cultures in means of communication. There is no doubt that Social networks are unique because they let people convene strangers and helps users to control and increase the chances of their social networks noticeable through opening of profiles. The services rendered by social services expand the capacity of people we have a chance of ever coming across near inevitable possibilities. There is immediate feedback of information because conversations are real time. Different bloggers and users meet in twitter hence share different views and ideas thus represent reverence for diversity. Oversimplification of conversations by use of semiotics has affected communication negatively since one has to go back and explain their statements. Twitter has a substantial growth and has several million users. If this is the case then it follows that it is of use to people who otherwise would not have had profiles in the micro blog (Bausch & McGiboney, 42). Statistically, twitter had over 145 million profile users by September 2010 (Van Grove). Works Cited Arceneaux, N. and Schmitz, A. Seems stupid until you try it: Press coverage of Twitter, 2006-9. New Media & Society, Vol. 12(8) Bausch, S. and McGiboney, M. Nielsen online provides fastest growing social networks for September 2008. New York: Nielsen Company, 2010 Boyd, D. Vizster: Visualizing online social networks. Minneapolis, MN: IEEE Press, 2005 Haythornthwaite, C. Social networks and Internet connectivity effects. Information, Communication, & Society. Vol.8 (2). DOI: 10.1080/13691180500146185. Jansen, B. Booth, D. & Spink, A. Determining the informational, navigational, and transactional intent of Web queries. Information Processing & Management. Vol. 44 (3). DOI:10.1016/j.ipm.2007.07.015 Sunden, J. Material Virtualities. New York: Peter Lang, 2003 Van Grove, J. Twitter surpasses 145 million registered users. Retrieved on December 10, 2011 from: < http://mashable.com/2010/09/03/twitter-registered-users-2> Read More