The Twitter Revolution

  Twitter has revolutionized the way information is spread. Beyond socializing and marketing, many people use Twitter as their main source of news. Twitter has come a long way since it started in 2006. The platform seems to continue to grow with more accounts being created and more information being posted.

 Twitter has even changed the way political campaigns are conducted. Social media, specifically Twitter, played a huge part in the most recent presidential election. One example of how politicians have used the platform to promote themselves is Donald Trump and the QAnon conspiracy theory. In October, Trump retweeted Qanon posts, falsely claiming that Joe Biden and Barack Obama had SEAL team 6 killed. Trump then continued to spread false information that was meant to discourage his supporters from using mail in voting. As people have seen this past week, his base seemed to believe those claims. Trump also used his Twitter platform to falsy link unrest in Portland to Biden.

 It is important for every journalist to use Twitter. For any news related job, Twitter is very helpful, as it is the only social media platform that updates in real time. There are other platforms that show the news, but none are quite as quick as Twitter. Especially during the past few weeks with the election, journalists have had to utilize Twitter. There has been a lot of misinformation being spread about the election, so journalists have been able to use their platform on social media by fact checking other tweets. They also are able to tweet out helpful articles. Having journalists on Twitter to fact check election information has been helpful. However, Twitter during the election can be difficult because the spread of misinformation is so rapid that it is impossible for every single false tweet to be fact checked. This has resulted in a lot of distrust towards the United States election process, which is harmful to our democracy. Twitter has begun showing warnings by tweets that they deem false, but it still does not stop the information from being retweeted and spread.

 Besides the election, which is arguably the most controversial event of the year, Twitter has played a big part in the global pandemic. Governors across the country used Twitter as a way to communicate new information and guidelines to citizens. Governor Andrew Cuomo was especially active on Twitter when the first lockdown began. He took to Twitter every day to tweet new guidelines and statistics. Many other governors did the same thing. Twitter is a useful tool to have during a global pandemic. Not everyone wants to turn on the television to watch daily briefings. Some people would rather open their Twitter app and see a quick update. Twitter became a great way to spread awareness of the virus to a wide audience of people.

 Another important event that was covered on Twitter was the Australian wildfires. These wildfires were something that many people across the world would not have ever known about if it wasn't for Twitter. Although news of the wildfires would have been shown on television, a lot of information that may not have been shared was able to be spread to people across the globe.

 For the Twitter project, the accounts I chose to follow were Joe Biden, CNN, and the National Review. These accounts were suitable for the topic I was focusing on, which was the election. This topic seemed like a perfect choice since it was so controversial. Social media, Twitter in specific, is the main source of information regarding the election.

 Twitter is definitely different from blogging or any other social media. Posting on Twitter is shorter because the maximum word count is 280. It is also not based on images. Although you can post images, Twitter doesn't prioritize that like Instagram does. The instant posting and constant updating of Twitter are what make this platform special.