JN 229 Entry #8: “News to me: Twitter and the personal networking of news”

Kate Crawford explains in her article News to me: Twitter and the personal networking of news that “the company behind Twitter does not see itself as a news channel, but as something far more dispersed and organic” (Crawford 115). According to Crawford, Twitter reached 44.5 million users in June 2009, which in my opinion is crazy.

As a user of Twitter myself, I am fully aware of what kind of ‘tweets’ are published on a daily basis. As the article states, “’electric technologies’ act as extensions of the human nervous system” (Crawford 115). Upon first reading this statement, I sat back and really thought about what it means. As I have thought about it, I have come to agree with what Twitter has become. I started using Twitter as a social project of sorts for a class last year. However, when the class ended, I kept my account and have continued to use it. I now follow a lot more users and have many following me as well. What I have noticed, is that while some users stick to the generic, “watching a movie” or “hanging out with so and so” tweets, there are some users that use Twitter for news purposes. For instance, many news organizations have Twitter accounts where they will tweet headlines or short story facts that will make followers go read the rest of the story.

From my experience, Twitter acts as both a social media and a news centre. People can catch up with friends and their favourite celebrities, but at the same time, users can read the latest headlines and hear what is going on around the world. One of my favourite users is actually “@LBcancellations”, which is Laurier Brantford University’s Twitter account for cancelled classes. It has become very convenient to follow this user, as sometimes my Laurier email, mylearningspace and/or the campus website will not open on my computer. On these days, it has become really easy to just check twitter to see if a class of mine has been cancelled. Many people will even change their settings so that users such as “@LBcancellations’” tweets are sent straight to their phone.

As a social media site and as a news centre, I believe that Twitter can be very beneficial. While using a social media site, which is something that the new generation of kids has become addicted to, people can read the news as well.