Exploring Twenty-First-Century Communication: Twitter

Created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Stone, Twitter, a short messaging service (SMS) platform, has altered certain communication practices. Dorsey, et. al. initially launched Twitter for internal use. However, their ultimate goal was to make it a mainstream service, and in 2007, Twitter went viral (Jue, Alcalde Marr, & Kassotakis, 2010, p. 57). Subsequently, just three years, two months, and one day after its development, Twitter posts had reached the one billion mark. In 2023 the site had an average of 450 million monthly users. The volume of information that flows across Twitter includes personal, business, political, and news messages. In 2022 billionaire Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter received widespread media coverage; in the aftermath of this purchase Musk became Twitter's CEO and instituted a number of changes, including rebranding the company to X in July 2023.

Background

In the development of Twitter, Dorsey and his colleagues brought together two common interests: “new media coding and radio [and] dispatch” technology (Rogers, 2013, p. 1). After brainstorming with a dictionary, Dorsey landed on the word, twitter, because of its primary meaning: “a short burst of . . . information” (Sarno, 2009a). Dorsey thought this fit the product’s end goal perfectly since the content of users’ posts would be short bursts of information. Tweets were limited to 140 characters, because SMS cell phone technology was limited to only 160 characters per message sent. Anything beyond 160 characters meant that the cell phone would split the message into two messages. That was how the brevity of Twitter was encoded into its software. Dorsey recalled, “we took 20 characters for the user name, and left 140 for the content” (Sarno, 2009a). In 2017, due to advances in cell phones and the large volume of messages being sent across the service, the 140-character limit was increased to 280 characters for most languages.

For nearly ten years, as users sent these character-limited messages, they learned to economize their language via abbreviations and symbols. One, the simple hashtag (#), formerly used to designate the word “number” or “pound” was suggested by Chris Messina in 2007 as a way to categorize tweets for easy searching and retrievability (Messina, 2007).

As suggested by Messina the hashtag functions to denote events, or signify messages from a group of people. This feature has been especially useful for a variety of contexts and purposes because tweets can be grouped and retrieved from a common location. Not only did the hashtag solve an immediate problem within the Twitter platform, but it also made communication searchable. Although this is now standard practice on Twitter and other social media platforms, Messina’s idea also heralded the beginnings of a significant change in communication practice to include searchable real-time textual communication streams.

Part of Twitter’s attractiveness centers on its mobile-friendly usage, its real-time streaming, and its brevity. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Dorsey described the birth of Twitter as a new type of communication stream that was influenced by his desire to create a “visualization” of how people and traffic move through a city. He began with GPS locators for mapping taxis and emergency vehicles but was not satisfied with gathering only geocentric data (Sarno, 2009b). Dorsey felt that something was missing—the human element—the people who make the traffic move within a city (Rogers, 2013, p.1).

Starting from existing instant messaging (IM) technology, Dorsey imagined software that could allow people to post computer or cellphone messages about what they were doing and where they were in real-time (Sarno, 2009a). Because Dorsey did not envision Twitter as a social networking site similar to Facebook, he looked for a term to describe how users would connect with each other. He settled on the term following because instead of users “friending” each other (as Facebook does) to view content, the Twitter platform was set up for users to “follow” the content of other users without having to identify as their friends or relatives. (Sarno, 2009a). Therefore, following someone meant that a user’s Twitter account is by default set to public. Anyone may choose to follow anyone else’s public account without the account owner’s permission. Following also meant that a Twitter user will receive a message every time another “followed” person’s Twitter account is updated with new posts.

According to O’Reilly and Milstein (2009), there are two key implications in this model. First, since Twitter users do not have to verify with each other, they are more likely to network with people that they do not personally know. Secondly, Twitter users must be clever. If a user is not interesting, no one will follow that user. Thus, the opt-in arrangement means that Twitter rewards interestingness (p. 25). If a user is interesting or witty, oftentimes the user’s posts will be retweeted, which is a mechanism by which a user may repost a tweet that was originated by someone else.

Retweeting is important for two reasons. First, it is a great way to increase exposure to a particular message. Secondly, it suggests “esteem” because when a user retweets somebody else, implicitly he or she says, “I respect you and your message” (O’Reilly and Milstein, 2009, p. 47). Thus, being retweeted is a way to increase social presence and to increase status on Twitter and is seen as a “sign of influence” (p. 47). However, over the following years, the focus and impact of Twitter’s short message bursts have shifted somewhat from Dorsey’s original concept of mapping traffic and posting personal status updates. As such, individuals may also use Twitter to create and promote a real or fabricated persona.

Crafting a Persona

Using frequent posts of carefully curated content, individuals, who “lack a strong public identity,” but seek fame and celebrity status, may use social media such as Twitter to build a fan base and project a carefully curated self/personal branding (Khamis, Ang, & Welling, 2016). The implications of this, of course, are troubling. Khamis, Ang, & Welling (2016) suggest three main areas of concern:

• Social media’s tacit promise of fame and fortune to “ordinary” users.
• Self-branding encourages a narrative of neoliberal individualism and suggests that those who self-brand will be “rewarded”.
• Some users who have achieved micro celebrity status make their success look easily replicable to their fans. (p.4)

Of course, Twitter and other forms of social media cannot possibly fulfill the tacit promise of fame and fortune to all its users. However, the pull for some people may be as strong as an addiction to gambling or any other addictive behavior. They are constantly checking their status, looking for affirmation, and acquiring personal worth from users’ responses and comments. Additionally, Twitter and other social media may encourage narcissistic behavior . Likewise, for those who do achieve some type of micro-celebrity, the message of “You can do it too!” is misleading and potentially dangerous to individuals who may be unduly influenced by false promises. Additionally, the implication of self-branding becomes even more exaggerated with well-known individuals (e.g., Kim Kardashian) who use social media to bring “their audience into the equation. . . . Eventually, with consistent juxtaposition, the human brand can become synonymous with the brand . . . of a product, service, or firm” (p.3).

Communication Practices

Twitter’s influence on communication practices differs from other social networking platforms in that it extends beyond the simple postings of users’ thoughts on the traffic, weather, and personal food preferences. Rogers (2013) remarks that this shift from the commonplace to the significant began to occur when the owners of Twitter replaced its original tagline of “What are you doing?” to “What is happening?” (p.4). This shift “signified a move from an ego to a reporting machine (p. 4). By asking users to respond to a question with an external (rather than internal) focus, the proverbial Pandora’s box had been opened. Users were explicitly being asked to report on what was happening not just to them but about events everywhere both near and far away. Likewise, Twitter’s primary usage shifted to become an information aggregator or a “discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now” (p.4). This has had significant implications for both public and private communication.

Since 2010, one such implication is that a company may use Twitter for social media marketing purposes. Companies such as Starbucks and Dell were early adopters of using Twitter to run contests, give away free samples, and in the case of Dell to function as an “early warning sign of poor keyboard design” (Gallaugher, 2015). However, while many brands and companies made extensive use of Twitter for social media marketing throughout the 2010s and early 2020s, Musk's purchase of the company in 2022 complicated Twitter's status as a leading platform for social media marketing. Expressing concerns over Musk's reforms and citing the possibility of rising hate speech and misinformation on Twitter, many brands and companies pulled back from the platform throughout 2022 and 2023, with serious financial consequences for the company. In July 2023 Musk revealed that Twitter's advertising revenue had fallen by over 50 percent since his purchase of the company the previous year. By that point Twitter also faced intense competition from TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms popular with brands looking to conduct outreach on social media.

Another example of Twitter’s effect on public communication is its use for reporting breaking news. Perhaps one of the most dramatic instances of Twitter usage was the first reports of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, citizen journalists used Twitter to relay the news to the world in real-time as the disaster unfolded (Sangani, 2010). At that time, a preliminary data analysis showed that Twitter posts were one of the leading sources of discussion about the quake and provided a means “to share information, react to the situation and rally support” (“Social Media and Mobile Texting a Major Source of Info and Aid for Earthquake in Haiti,” 2010). In fact, President Obama’s historic first presidential tweet was from a Red Cross building he had visited in response to the Haiti earthquake (Henry, 2010).

However, citizen journalists are not the only ones to use Twitter. Professional journalists also use Twitter to develop a more informal relationship with readers and by engaging readers to respond to their work (Burgess & Hurcombe, 2019, p. 362). Some news outlets such as “Buzzfeed—actually require journalists to have an active and visible presence Twitter presence” in addition to a journalist’s more traditional work (p. 362). In the early days of Twitter, this type of responsive journalism was considered to be a great hallmark of the democratizing of information.

Conversely, in 2019, the concern became the prevalent spreading of information of questionable worth. Since any person with a Twitter account can set themselves up as an expert in anything, it falls to the individual, then, to carefully read and analyze information to determine its veracity and legitimacy. This, too, is a shift in communication practice. Prior to real-time social media feeds, readers relied on well-established traditional news sources such as major radio, television, and newspaper outlets. These sources were staffed with well-respected individuals who were trusted to bring vetted, credible content to its viewers and listeners.

While it may be argued that readers have always had to carefully and critically consume content, the overwhelming crush of information flowing across Twitter and other social media sites impedes a reader’s judgment of excellent vs. poor news. The implications are that at some point readers will either limit their consumption to known entities (and thus potentially limit their exposure to multiple sides of an issue) or they will haphazardly interact with content with little regard or plan for its consumption. This important shift from controlled news sources to an open news network has led some scholars to believe that Twitter and other social media platforms have promoted a populist mentality within the US political arena, and which may, in turn, contribute to “echo chambers” (Jacobs & Spierings, 2018).

Echo chambers (see Figure 1) occur when individuals in a high-choice media environment self-select information sources based upon their own beliefs. In this setting people “only encounter things they already agree with” (Dubois & Blank, 2018). Some researchers (Dubois & Blank, 2018; Bail et. al, 2018; Guess, Lyons & Reifler, 2018), however, dispute the validity and prevalence of echo chambers in politics and culture. Whether echo chambers are a real threat or not, Twitter users must curate, manage, consume, and create credible and reliable information. Subsequently, the potential for real-time, on-the-ground reporting by Twitter users, who are in the midst of breaking news, provides a clearer perspective on events, people, and places. This is still a valuable asset for open and free sources of human communication.

The spread of misinformation, or "fake news," became an issue on Twitter during the mid-2010s and continued into the 2020s. In 2018, a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that fake news spreads faster on Twitter than real news does, and, contrary to popular belief, is predominately spread by humans, not bots (fake accounts created solely to spread misinformation). Bots, fake news, and the spread of misinformation continued to be a widespread problem for Twitter, especially in terms of the impact these factors can have on elections and other important events.

In April 2022 it was announced that Twitter had agreed to a deal for its purchase by billionaire Elon Musk. The deal closed in October of that year, and Musk's acquisition of the platform was widely reported on in the news. Following its purchase, Musk made several controversial decisions regarding the social media service, including unbanning Donald Trump and initiating widespread firings and layoffs. By December 2022, Bloomberg had reported that Musk had fired or laid off more than half of Twitter's workforce. Other changes followed in subsequent months, including Musk's decision in July 2023 to rebrand the company to X.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Twitter’s unique structure of opt-in technology that allows users to follow other users’ content without having to gain permission has altered our communication practices in significant ways. First, with the use of the hashtag symbol, users have a mechanism for searching communication threads. Secondly, users have the ability to curate and promote carefully constructed self-branding personas. Thirdly, Twitter has allowed the ordinary person to be a citizen journalist of the world and an active rather than passive participant with journalists. Finally, Twitter usage has shifted the flow of information from traditional news sources to a democratized stream of communication flowing from all corners of the globe, with a new emphasis on user-generated content. However, the platform also raised concerns about the possibility for users to spread hate speech and other forms of problematic or dangerous content. Additionally, the ability of Twitter to ban or censor users who violated the company's policies also generate debate over the role of social media companies in moderating free speech.

About the Author

Lynn B. McCool, PhD, is an assistant professor of business communication in the College of Business and Public Administration at Drake University. Her research examines the intersection of social media, digital rhetoric, online writing instruction, and professional writing pedagogy.

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Further Reading

O'Reilly, T., & Milstein, S. (2011). The twitter book. O'Reilly Media.

Rogers, R. (2013, May). Debanalizing Twitter: The transformation of an object of study. In Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference (pp. 356–365).