Twitter serves as a means of expediently connecting people and fostering an exchange of ideas to an entire globe that was once limited to geographic circulation boundaries. Technological and cultural change has transformed the way acting prosumers respond to the nature of digital writing media in new ways. Nicotra claims that the traditional definitions of writing have become ‘constrictive’ as it is no longer solely about “the act of producing a discrete textual object.” (Nicotra, 2009, p. 259). The advent of the internet and other communication technologies has changed the way that we read and write, allowing for a prosumer model in which remediation continues to multiply the amount of available content rapidly.
Twitter builds ties to the community by connecting members with similar interests through a process of multi-user tagging. Hashtags are utilised “as a way to classify messages and have since become a cultural phenomenon” (Nelson & Widder, 2017). Twitter’s remediation continues to multiply the amount of available content rapidly to mark specific topics or keywords alongside is its strict limitation of 140 characters per ‘tweet’. Stommel points out that these constraints provide “an intentional and curious engagement with how sentences, words, and letters make meaning”. (Stommel, 2012). A tweet then could be seen as a model of concision as Konnikova states that “the tendency is compounded as a way of coping with an overload of information”. (Konnikova, 2014). In a digital age, most Twitter users enjoy how the platform challenges the ways to view and think about writing, and how prosumers have produced connections between writers, readers and ideas to develop the full value of the meaning of how we write.
Published: Medium
Reference List
Nicotra, J. (2009). “Folksonomy” and the restructuring of writing space. College Composition and Communication, 61(1), W259-W276. Retrieved March 12, 2019, from https://search.proquest.com/docview/220693976?accountid=152970
Stommel, J. (2012, January 6). The Twitter Essay. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://web.archive.org/web/20170616000601/http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/the-twitter-essay/
Konnikova, M. (2014, July 16). Being a Better Online Reader. Retrieved April 2, 2019, from https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/being-a-better-online-reader
Nelson, K., & Widder, B. (2017, February 10). How to Use Twitter Like A Social Media Boss. Retrieved from https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/how-to-use-twitter/
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