Twitter is a platform that played a huge role in the blossoming of social media in the 21 centuries, it has been the leading front along the sides of Facebook and Instagram as the leading front of social media. Compared to those two platforms Twitter is very unique because it’s not just a social network rather it is a place where news can be first broken and the reach is quite unimaginable, twitter is a place where strangers can converse as a result of one hashtag. It is a word driven site at its peak but ultimately twitter is just more open and as a result more information tends to spread faster compared to other networks. This gift can also be a curse if you read the article by Simon Ricketts on “How the Boston Marathon explosions reveal the two sides of Twitter” he drives into the how great this platform was prior to the Boston marathon explosions, he credits twitter for its rawness, quickness to observe and spread news and just overall impact on everyone’s lives. But with all the great attributes twitter possesses the marathon disaster showed Ricketts the true dangers of twitter he states “It seems to me, very often these days, that Twitter is the funnel is turned upside down. All of those disparate ingredients are poured into the nozzle. The narrow part. And they are not filtered, not regulated, not tested. But they come out of the wide part of the funnel. They are spread across a large area. Indiscriminately”. Twitters immediacy during the bombing in Boston in that instance resulted in many false narratives being told and he went on to list twelve major damaging statements which came out to be false but the damage to those people’s and organization being accused was already done. Twitter overall can me a great tool for journalist because its driven by the peoples, you can receive all type of key information without having to go out in the field and that’s the true beauty of twitter but it still has to be filtered right before breaking any type of significant stories. After the killing of Gorge Floyd, the video of his demise started to spread on all social media sites including twitter. This became a huge talking point in twitter, the video of police officers killing another Black person cause a worldwide uproar not only on twitter but also in the real world, as people protested. A significant story that twitter helped magnify was also another police related incident but this time it was in Nigeria. The hashtag #Endsars started trending out of nowhere, it was how I personally found out about the malicious killings by police officer on Nigerian youths that was happening. Again, as a result it became a worldwide matter where even American celebrities joined the movement by twitting #endsars and supporting Nigerians.
I chose to follow Fox News on twitter because of their favoritism on the former President who I personally do not support and ultimately, I just wanted to observe the things they twitted. The second page I followed was Bleacher report because of my love for sports, they do a great job of posting all information you need on not just one particular sport but different verities. Lastly, I followed the Sky sports premier league, I love soccer and the premier league is the best league in soccer but they also do a great job in providing all the information you need about this one particular sport. Prior to this I used my personal twitter account by just observing without twitting at all, this experience was different for me because I had to be more engaged in the app, prior to the project I spent on average less than ten minutes a day on twitter but I do truly love the uniqueness of twitter and the trending page slowly became my number one go to place for news and information going on around the world.
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