What did I find I hear you cry! Well… quite a bit actually. Stripping
away the crap that clogged up my out-dated Twitter newsfeed I began to filter
and follow. I filtered through accounts that gained my interest in various
areas; some journalism, feminism, advertising companies and some arty-farty
bits and bobs. I then began to delve deeper, ‘following’ people who had some
pretty cool opinions/news on my selected areas of interest. This was also around about the time I stumbled across the ‘hashtag’; an incredibly efficient way of finding out more about something that I was interested in. For example, if I ‘hashtagged' #art it would allow me to ‘#discover’ a ridiculous amount of information around and about that topic, whilst still having the ability to connect with new people.
Through this, I began to gain knowledge about things I
wouldn't have otherwise found. One of the beautiful things about microblogging
is the compact information which is fed through to you; a post is short and
sweet and often summarises the content of an article or conversation, meaning
more time for tea-making and cake-eating. The fact 'tweets' are compacted into a mere 140 characters means that the information communicated has to be efficient, leaving little room for all that flowery talk (a.k.a bullshit). This is actually wonderful when having a little scroll through your Twitter newsfeed as, generally speaking, your selection process is reduced to a choice of two; one that provides you with a short, condensed summary of information, as previously stated, or, one that entices you with something a little more enigmatic in an attempt to rouse your curiosity. As a result, my eyes were opened to a whole new world and way of communicating. Twitter's efficiency is not only a great platform for swiftly sharing and accessing information on-the-go, but also one that presents journalism in a whole new format. Gone are the days where you have to wait to read about the news, instead you are given regular updates which you can choose to follow or ignore.
After a lot of browsing, and following (and a bit of
procrastinating), I decided to take it one step further… I decided to ENGAGE. I
felt it about time to make my public début after reading a lot and learning a
lot. I went about this by actually ‘tweeting’ about features I’d read, liked
and disliked. I also began ‘retweeting’ posts I felt were really good and even
ventured as far as posing questions to the authors, for want
of finding out more. This was something I found to be majorly successful, and
rather exciting; I was engaging with journalists and people I admired, and in
doing so, was having an opinion that would possibly be viewed by a rather large amount of people. After engaging with a few people, I was pleasantly surprised to find
I was getting responses, and on occasion, questions put back to me regarding my
own thoughts on certain topics.
@BachelorWoman I agree, men don't seem to care as much. Then again, men aren't pressured by talk of their body-clock ticking away.
— Gabriella Grant (@GiftoftheGab01) October 12, 2014
@GiftoftheGab01 @UFJSchool Personally, I think the physical product will be reduced, but demand for “content” increases on digital/Web/etc.
— Robert Hernandez (@webjournalist) October 27, 2014
In all honesty, there was a bit of a buzz to it, you weren't
just posting pics of your messy Saturday night antics to your friends and
acquaintances for ‘lols', instead you were actually involving yourself in something
a bit bigger, and for better reasons. I found myself being exposed to stories, news and people I would have otherwise remained ignorant to, and as
a result, found myself beginning to talk about these snippets of information
with others away from Twitter. I was beginning to feel part of something really rather interesting. Twitter had come to feel like something of a community. McMillan and Chavis point out in a 1986 article, that this sense of community is created through four elements: membership, integration, fulfilment of needs, and shared emotional connections. This is something Twitter definitely generates. Within this new-found community I was experiencing comments being constantly exchanged that elicited emotional responses along with the opportunity to either take part or merely
spectate.
I have become (much to my surprise) very much a fan of
Twitter. Through interacting and engaging with it, I have come to appreciate
its full potential and learn how useful it can be. Not only is it a platform
for socialising and learning, it also offers opportunities to network and
educate. Yes, I still like to share a few bits of trivial information about nothing too important now and then, but I am now using Twitter in a much more resourceful way. Without sounding like some sort of middle-class hippie, I feel using Twitter is, and has been, an enriching experience... pretty deep right? The thing is, through using Twitter I have found out interesting information on a daily basis about the world and the people in it, and to say that my exposure hasn't improved/enhanced my knowledge, would be a bare faced lie. Twitter isn't everything but it is a ridiculously useful platform I would encourage anyone to explore.
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