There has been much (virtual) ink spilled in the effusive praise of the "power" of social media in general and Twitter in particular in times of upheaval or "crisis". We certainly saw this again in the recent events in St. Jean sur Richelieu and, especially, Ottawa.
There is no doubt that Twitter, in such times, has the tremendous power of immediacy. We can seemingly know about things virtually in real time. Not only can we read words, but we can see images--still pictures or short video clips. In a culture which gives primacy to sight and visuality ("a picture is worth a thousand words", "seeing is believing", and so on), the combination of immediacy and imagery is powerful stuff, indeed.
I was certainly scrolling through my Twitter feed on the morning of the Ottawa shooting--as were my students (adult ESL learners). It struck me that this was definitely a "teachable moment"! We began to discuss the situation--in real time, as events unfolded, official communication was virtually non-existent, and Twitter feeds updated at a frantic rate.
We noticed several things. The first was the almost irresistible impulse to constantly refresh Twitter--seeking the most recent, the most immediate, the most visceral, even the most graphic, "information". The second was the confusion we all felt. Twitter was immediate, yes, but it had no coherence. It was an endless stream of disjointed and fragmentary information, virtually impossible to keep up with, let alone assemble into any sense of meaningful coherence.
The third was the absence of any seemingly reliable information. This digressed into a tangential discussion about the relationship between "reliable" information and "official" communication. There was virtually no "official" communication forthcoming. My students remarked upon this that morning. This vacuum of official information ended up becoming a "story" in itself--I heard interviews about it on more than one CBC Radio program.
The fourth thing was noticed was erroneous or misleading "information". There were tweets about shots being fired at other locations around Ottawa (Rideau Mall, downtown, etc), which turned out not to be true. Some were "refuted" fairly quickly; others took more time to be disproven. This triggered considerable discussion about the veracity of Twitter among my students.
Ultimately, what was the "power" of Twitter during last week's events? It was not a particularly effective means of interpersonal communication. My sister was in a building which was locked down. I was far more able to communicate with her via text messaging than through a platform such as Twitter.
It was not a source of particularly relevant, meaningful, accurate, or useful information. Anyone looking for useful information (such as what areas were "locked down", meaningful updates on the actual events, and so on) was far better off tuning in to one of the many live media broadcasts. Trying to find useful nuggets of information in the deluge of tweets was akin to looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
In the final analysis, Twitter had no real "power" or "magic" last week. Yet it was irresistible. It was irresistible because we all want to know what's happening right now. Everyone thought Twitter might tell them something a few minutes or even a few seconds before it was reported by the media.
I have thought about this many times in the past. The disconnect between some of the utopian rhetoric around Twitter in theory and the perceived banality of it in practice is/was, in fact, the subject of my (now dormant, but hopefully to be revived) art project of exploring Twitter as a medium of communication.
There seems to be a powerful desire for Twitter (and other social media) to be something more than they really are. Social theorists and social activists point to its magical "power" in moments like Ottawa last week. But academic analyses after the fact have all come to the conclusion that this "magic" was in fact illusory. Corporations are all desperately trying to figure out how to have a "social media presence/strategy"--with the obvious motive of trying to make more money. Yet users complain about (and claim to ignore) Facebook advertising and "promoted" tweets. Do we really care what Coke, Tide, or Westjet "say" on social media?
Educators, too, have fallen victim to the siren song of Twitter. Everyone seems to be seeking some sort of utility in it. But i'm truly not sure that there is any such utility--political, commercial, educational, or otherwise.
I am a (fairly heavy) Twitter user. I use it like virtually everyone else does--socially and/or recreationally. This is what Twitter is. Twitter generally explodes during "live events". These could be awards shows, sports events, TV shows (especially those with large "cult" followings), or the "news" (typically celebrity "news", but occasionally more substantive "news"--such as an election, a natural disaster, or an event such as that in Ottawa last week).
All one needs to know about what Twitter is and what it does is to look at the list of "trends" on one's homepage. Twitter is exactly a "social medium"--nothing more, nothing less. It is social. But we cannot make the leap from "social" to more ambitious notions such as "community" (or "politics", or "economics", etc). It is simply a "virtuall water cooler"--a "place" where people engage in small talk, gossip, and exchange tidbits of "news" which may or may not be true.
Try as we might--and people from various corners have been trying for some time now--we cannot force Twitter to become anything other that what it is. Twitter is different from Facebook, to be sure. Twitter is more "outward-looking" whereas Facebook is more insular and inwardly focused. I like to think of Twitter as an extroverted person and Facebook as an introvert. But Twitter offers no "magic" for political causes or events, global capitalism, or education.
