I initially downloaded twitter this year, after 4-5 years of creating my online persona through other apps such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. What interests me the most about all these powerful social media platforms, is the presence itself ability to determine someone's worth all through a page, which exhibits how and what you do and how this makes you different from others, along with how followers can create this sense of a media hierarchy in today's world.
When I first got my hands onto a Twitter account I figured it would be similar to every other app, post your thoughts on issues in society, images of what you think is humorous, and a building of your online persona/presence. Although I found that Twitter is more of sporadic thought instead of a well-executed and eye-pleasing post. As journalism has held an interest of mine for quite some time, due to its technological affordances, Twitter has become a first choice for me to take part in the constructive process of the personal and collective news. Through this site, people can publicise their views and opinions concerning the news as well as acknowledge flaws within the media. (Craft, Vos, & Wolfgang, 2015).
The phrase ‘affordances’ relates to the potential of a term in the assurance of a user's execution of action (Gibson 1977). Acknowledgment of a model affordance provides the audience the process of understanding which the average person manifests and if it suits the standard practice (Cherny, 1995). Every website requires noticeable guides on how you should operate its webpage. This is where visible clues or affordances come into play, they guide users into what activities they should do on the site, how you can post, or something such as where you should purchase an item. In the case of Twitter, The variety of affordances that it displays to its users include:
Quoting a tweet
Retweet
Short posts consisting of 280 characters in which you can send and receive
Pinning a tweet onto your profile
Hashtags which help gain followers and post viewers
Polls
Fleets which are short term twitter stories
Like other people's tweets through a small heart-shaped icon
What I like about Twitter is the lack of visual images shown on my feed, this creates the aspect of visual imagination. In the absence of an image, we are forced to visualise things in their absence. Most people when they are asked to think about a time they patted a dog, create this image of the most recent visual of what happened. That's why with Twitter it's simply just a short expression of interest that can be interpreted in several ways.
I find Twitter has become a new wave of opportunities for my online presence, whether it's creating a business opportunity or something as simple as finding a reliable news source. Twitter shows a professional way of presenting yourself in a structured judgment-free zone.
References
Esrc.ukri.org. 2021. What is Twitter and why should you use it? - Economic and Social Research Council. [online] Available at: <https://esrc.ukri.org/research/impact-toolkit/social-media/twitter/what-is-twitter/> [Accessed 29 August 2021].
Groshek, J., 2014. The affordance effect | Proceedings of the 7th 2016 International Conference on Social Media & Society. [online] Dl.acm.org. Available at: <https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2930971.2930993> [Accessed 29 August 2021].
Suthers, D., 2018. Twitter Issue Response Hashtags as Affordances for Momentary Connectedness - Chamil Rathnayake, Daniel D. Suthers, 2018. [online] SAGE Journals. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118784780> [Accessed 29 August 2021].
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