The Effect of Twitter on Language Development - Term Paper Example

October 8, The Effect of Twitter on Language Development Introduction Just take a look around and it will be readily noticeable that the way individuals communicate with one another today is radically different than just a few decades ago, and light years away from the ways our ancestors interacted with each other. Communication then involved hand writing messages or delivering them verbally through a messenger. The wait time for a response from the recipient could be anywhere for a few hours if the person was in the vicinity, to several months if they were continents away. The reality is that we adapt to the means we have at our disposal. The truth is also that individual communication centuries ago took a long time by today’s standards, but it was the expected course of life back then. Today, however, much of society depends on instant communication and Twitter can certainly be considered to be on the forefront of this revolution. In looking at the various ways that society has communicated over the ages, it is helpful to consider the role of journalists in our culture. They have been primarily responsible for communicating local, national, and international events on a global scale. In the past, this form of communication has largely taken place via print or television media. Some argue that journalists will soon begin to not be needed in this age of rapid and technological communication. On the contrary, journalists will continue to have a place in the way society communicates, but they will be doing so in a dramatically different way than before. This paper will analyze the way that Twitter is revolutionizing communication amongst members of society and it will explore issues related to communication then and now, while focusing on the impact that this social media device is having on language development. Finding of Evidence From its outset, Twitter was designed to revolutionize the way individuals and businesses communicate with one another. Today, it has been transformed into a global phenomenon that has captivated hundreds of millions of people worldwide as they communicate instantly with thousands of people at any given time (Trombly, 2008). While initially the concept of Twitter was to provide a communication mechanism amongst organizations and working professionals, the reality was that this did not occur from the outset. At the time Twitter was launched, many of the targeted working professionals were utilizing the Blackberry Smart Phone device. This accomplished much of what twitter was trying to do through its instant 140 character texts. Anyone on the Blackberry platform, however, could instantly communicate with a number of other users in much the same manner. In the end, however, the concept of twitter caught on because it transcended one particular device. It would revolutionize the target audience and truly bring the world to the users fingertips. This quick burst of messaging, with limited characters, has resulted in the development of the so-called Twitter language, which is reshaping the individuals, young people in particular, communicate with one another via language. As mentioned, the early users of Twitter were not the business professional it was targeting. Trombly (2008) noted, “Early adopters, as with most of social media platforms, were primarily teenage girls and the technology obsessed” (p. 1). Before long, however, the number of users skyrocketed to include, among other demographic groups, venture capitalists, journalists, and stock traders. These are the professions that, perhaps more than any other, depend upon an almost instantaneous transmission of breaking news. Imagine the stock trader that is a few seconds late in executing an emergency sell order. Millions could be lost. Similarly, journalists can miss out on being first at the scene of the story today if not using Twitter, as others around them will have long received the news before they did. The list of uses is almost endless as Twitter continues to expand it potential user base. Twitter not only exponentially expands the number of individuals or organizations a person can communicate with simultaneously, but those same entities can also receive desired information instantly themselves. This further expands a person’s knowledge base about topic of interest to them, without having to necessarily have access to other forms of media in order to do so (McDermott, 2010). This can prove especially useful for journalists who are looking to strengthen their network of contacts. By becoming a ‘follower’ of certain key individuals, they can be made aware of trends in the industry, enhance their own social network in the journalistic community, and work to be up to date on the newest and latest news (Latonero & Shklovski, 2011). In a similar fashion, Twitter has continued to change the way people from all walks of life keep up to date with the people that mean the most to them, as well as receive information that they are most interested in following. The online communication revolution has also increased accountability. In the past, information changed hands slowly and it was often difficult to verify its accuracy with any degree of certainty. Today, that has changed as more and more people have access to similar pieces of information, so accuracy is key. This is innovation at its best. It allows journalists and other types of industries to maintain a higher standard of integrity. In essence, the transparency of the daily operation and schedule of an individual becomes open for scrutiny, increasing the level of trust that the Twitter followers have in the tweets that are being communicated on a regular basis. Ellen McDermott, speaking about intellectual property and USPTO, effectively conveyed this point be proclaiming, “Communicating through Twitter allows us to have even more nimble and effective in quickly conveying news and information to the public, building upon our existing online presence through Facebook and the USPTO website”. This speaks to way that Twitter, more than other social media websites, is enabling rapid communication to nearly anyone who desires it. As such, individuals who might otherwise not read much during the course of an average day, are now developing literacy skills as they read multiple messages from multiple sources all day long. Facebook and other sites limit the number of individuals a person or entity can communicate with at one time, but the bounds of Twitter are seemingly limitless. With some entities on Twitter now having over one million followers in their own right, it has in many respects become a more powerful journalistic tool than even television or newspaper. This has more impact than just traditional forms of journalism as well. Twitter was truly designed to allow instant communication to the masses. The one profession where this use makes sense more than any other was journalism. When society considers the journalist profession, they typically navigate towards a discussion of television or news reporters. The reality is, however, that anyone in a person to speak to the masses possesses journalistic power. Religious evangelists, for example, have taken to spreading news important to their faith to millions of followers worldwide. In past decades, even centuries, this often took place verbally or via printed religious material. If a follower did not have instant access to this information, it often took quite some time for news to reach them, by which time the debate might be over, the vote already conducted, or the church having already moved onto other social agenda items of the day. While the early days of Twitter did not allow journalists to meet the goal of reaching out to millions of users at once, a shift has taken place in recent years that has certainly made this a reality. Consider the new Pope of the Catholic Church. Twitter was never envisioned as a tool for mass evangelism, yet this exactly what is happening in 2013. Pope Benedict XVI has only been in office for a short time, yet he already has a reputation of using technology to speak to the faithful around the globe (Moloney, 2012). This has encouraged a new generation of people to be actively involved in reading his messages, contributing in a small way to their literacy development in ways never before imagined. This is a massive shift in ideology for an organization that is often criticized for moving too slowly in the face of rapid globalization and social change. Pope Benedict XVI desires to change this feeling and mindset. What he is doing is akin to the journalistic shift taking place throughout much of the world today. It has been said that, “The pope’s new communication gambit has a clear objective: reaching out to younger generations – the one demographic that is vital to the church’s expansion” (Moloney, 2012). This is certainly a shift in the traditional values of the church, which reflects a shift in the way the world it communicating. While the Catholic Church is striving to maintain its connection of the older and more traditional members, it is also desperately trying to reach out to a younger generation who simply uses other mediums by which to get access to critical information. In a similar manner, journalists today are not tossing out all forms of traditional communication, but they are rapidly developing modern communication devices such as Twitter in order to greatly expand their reach. In the end, Twitter is about the spreading of news, both personally and publicly. This seems like a logical concept, yet the very notion of who makes use of Twitter, and sites similar to it, is gradually changing with the introductions of tools such as Twitter. In years past, news was either communicated publicly or privately. In order for news to reach the masses, for example, it generally took a major new conglomerate to transmit the communication via wire to newspaper and television outlets worldwide. Journalism professionals then chose what information was truly newsworthy for their particular organization, and which could be discarded. Local communities had an even larger delay in the transmission of news as such information was generally reserved for weekly, or monthly, communications in newspaper form. By that time, much of the news was ‘old’ and not necessary. Today, however, anyone can be a journalist. ‘Tweets’ can be sent to communicate a wide array of information to people of interest, without having to wait for the television or print media to transmit it. Consider the celebrity that announces the birth of their new baby, or equally as important, the private citizen who does the same to their Twitter followers that are composed of close family and friends (McKean, 2009). Both modes of communication, using Twitter, is journalism, yet not in the old-fashioned sense. Many celebrities today, for example, have seen a decrease in the number of paparazzi that follow them around on a minute by minute basis because they have simply take to Twitter themselves to convey information to their fans, beating the ‘professional’ journalist to the punch. It is yet another example of how Twitter has literally transformed not only the face of communication, as we know it, but the profession of journalism as well. Twitter has also changed the conciseness with which news is reported. In the past, vast spaces of newsprint needed to be filled up, so stories were often filled with a great deal of information that the public did not truly need. Much of it went unread as readers simply gleaned over the information that they felt was most relevant to them. With the coming of the television, the communication of the news narrowed somewhat as the amount of time on air was extremely limited. While this served the purpose of communicating exactly what needed to be said, and little more, it went a bit too far in the reality that much of the news simply went unreported owed to a lack of time. Twitter has revolutionized the communication of news even further as followers are able to pick and choose the areas of interest to them and receive instant information at all hours of the day. That balances the broadness of the newspaper with the narrowness of the television (McKean, 2009). Twitter goes even farther than simply reaching customers with only the information that they desire, they do so with a succinctness and clarity that has never before been seen, either in print or online media. As KcKean (2009) reports, “Unlike blog posts and Facebook status updates, Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters – easily displayed on a cell phone” (p. G5). So, whereas Facebook and blogging can have that ‘newspaper effect’ where simply too much information is being transmitted, Twitter forces the sender (or journalist) to be much more concise and convey only the vital information that the reader has really asked for by becoming a follower. This is of extreme interest to the journalist who can promote his or her own blog via Twitter. They can being by captivating their followers with a catch tweet that leaves individuals wanting more, and then direct them to an online Internet site where much more detailed and in-depth reporting can take place. This enables journalists to still apply their trade, yet only expand the information offered to those that are truly interested in the kind of in-depth investigative reporting that used to standard place in the journalistic world. It also bears mentioning that Twitter has changed communication for many professions, not just journalism. Consider the reality now that Twitter has changed the way that colleges and universities recruit athletes. In order to compete with a myriad of schools that might be interested in a particular athlete, recruiters traditionally spent much of the year traveling to different locations to personally meet with individuals. A meeting may have been effective, only to be thwarted the next week by another equally effective visit from another school from the other side of the country. In this age of increasing budgetary concerns, recruiters are now taking to Twitter to send constant updates to their respective recruits (Barr, 2009). This enables them to promote their university, have current athletes send tweet to those considering attending a particular school, in addition to serving the purpose of keeping the school in the athlete’s frame of vision. This was not possible before the creation of such a technological tool to be used for communication. Conclusion Twitter has certainly come a long way from ‘then’, as compared to now. When the tool was first made it available, teenage girls almost exclusively used it as a means to keep in touch with their friends. Word gradually spread, however, about the usefulness of being to send concise text message of no more than 140 characters to potentially millions of individuals, around the world, and instantly to boot. The possibilities back then were almost endless, and continue to be so today, as more and more uses for services such as Twitter continue to be developed. While the future of communication will surely continue to change, it would appear that services such as Twitter are well situated to adapt with those changes as time goes on. Individuals crave instant communication in a fashion that is quick to read and easy to understand. It is difficult to imagine a more instantaneous way to communicate than Twitter, and by confining each individual message to only 140 characters, they have nearly mastered the need to almost force people (journalists included) to save their in-depth news reporting for blogs and other social networking sites. While Twitter will likely see competition from new start-up services in the future, many offering new various techniques of this type of communication, they will have the benefit of already possessing hundreds of millions of users that are satisfied with their ability to instantly communicate both serious, as well as fun-natured, ‘tweets’ will all of their followers with a few simple pushes of a button. That is the communication of now, and the way even more will communicate in the future, all the while allowing individuals to developing their own skills in reading and writing, even if it is via short instant messages. 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