Twitter: The New Town Hall?
SI410 Blog
What was once a medium used to share funny memes with your friends has now become a powerful tool to influence political systems in our world. At its inception, Twitter allowed for people to exchange ideas, but as a consequence this also allowed for people to use the platform to influence others. For better or worse, this allows political movements and politicians to gain power through using Twitter.
With the introduction of social media platforms like Twitter, it has removed a lot of the friction needed to access information and also share information. It has become easier to make your own content and it has also become easier to share that content with horizontal networks of other people. This allows for the powerful use of mass self-communication to spread your ideas and to gain power amongst your followers.
To gain political influence, you must first reach out to the people and win them over with your ideas and information. This has always been the case throughout history. According to Castell, “communication and information have been fundamental sources of power and counter-power, of domination and social change. This is because the fundamental battle being fought in society is the battle over the minds of the people.” It should be no surprise that with how massive Twitter has grown throughout the years, it has become an increasingly important tool for political actors to use so that they can gain power.
A social media presence is now a requirement for any political movement that wants to succeed in the United States. For instance, the progressive movement has gained a lot of momentum from viral and popular tweets coming from iconic political figures like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders. With the many likes and retweets their posts get, their ideas gain credibility amongst the people and spread fast throughout the horizontal networks of social media. Politicians like Congresswoman Cortez have gained a lot of popularity thanks to their social media posts and helped boost her ideas to the limelight.
While some movements might have good intentions, some may be nefarious and damaging. Take for instance the Q-Anon conspiracy theory that spread like wildfire across the internet. Disinformation can be spread as easily as correct information within social media platforms like Twitter, and due to the nature of how these platforms work it can be very hard to regulate this flow of data. This becomes dangerous since inaccurate data can be spread with ill-intent to harm and manipulate others.
Twitter has already begun cracking down on conspiracy theorists and disinformation on the platform by banning certain accounts and adding corrections to certain tweets. Tweets which mentioned that the 2020 elections were decided on “fraud” were quickly flagged by Twitter as disinformation as shown in the image below:
Twitter has also started to flag twitter accounts with political connections in the hopes of adding transparency behind the Twitter handles.
These measures implemented by Twitter highlight how the platform has evolved into a political tool that can be used to influence the masses. Twitter has become a virtual town hall of sorts, where almost anyone can come up and express their opinion. In many ways this evolution was inevitable. Communication is integral within politics, and since platforms like Twitter makes communication easier it can be used as a political tool to muster power.
Sources:
Castells, M. (2007). Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society. International journal of communication, 1(1), 29.
