Friday, 16 August 2013

Blog 1 - Twittering away

Twitter is an online social network that allows users to 'tweet', or broadcast messages to the world. It seems as though the purpose of Twitter is to gain followers in order to create your own personal virtual network in which you can broadcast your opinions to be seen by as many people as possible.

Dr Theresa Petray (2013) has stated in the lecture that maps are used as a way to illustrate the spatial distributions and implications of power. This is obvious in that those who have a larger network of followers, such as famous actors and musicians hold the majority of power within the site, they are undoubtedly more influential that someone like myself who has only two followers so far. Twitter relies on the celebrities as a way to draw people into the site. According to Barnes (1997) "The user is thereby ensnared within the virtual space merely by the force of their desire for spectacle". The lure of celebrity gossip has been used to sell merchandise for years and is now being used in these websites like Twitter, with thousands of celebrity accounts promoting events.

The site is well set out so that a single message can be broadcasted to hundreds of people at one time within a matter of minutes, if this was to be undertaken in real world time it would take a lot longer. The site allows the users to feel as though they have unlimited potential in following the lives of others. Barnes (1997) explains that "Although the cyber-Flaneur is physically immobile, their gaze is 'mobilized' by an illusion of spatial and temporal mobility -  a perception of virtual locomotion in time with an alternative geography". The movement around the site is fluid with a menu being made available to quickly change from each account to another which allows the user to follow the tweets of a friend living down the road to a celebrity living across the world.

References
Barnes, G. (1997). Passage of the Flaneur. Retrieved from: https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp

Petray, V. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, Lecture 3.1 Maps: Seeing and shaping the world. Retrieved from: https://learnjcu.edu.au

Image references
 Twitter network. Retrieved from: http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/02/12-twitter-stream-aggregators/
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. Unknown17 August 2013 at 12:01

    Hi Jessica,

    Narelle here! I have never used Twitter but my brother in law is addicted and if ever someone 'famous', mostly soccer player in his case, follow him he gets very excited! I think he feels more powerful in a way by having someone he views as 'famous' follow him. As a new user did you feel disempowered by only having 2 followers? Do you think as Barnes (1997) says that the more familiar you get with Twitter the more comfortable you will be with it? or in Twitter's case do you think it will not be how comfortable it is but rather how many followers you have?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown22 August 2013 at 17:26

    Hi Jessica :)

    I myself have a Twitter account, however, I never really got into it. From what I have observed though, I totally agree the power is in fact held by that of celebrities or at least those that manage these accounts. It is interesting to see how that when an important figure post an interesting tweet, media in all its forms knows about it and broadcast it as news. Truthfully I think that its ridiculous, although I guess that this is backed by you choice of quote by Barnes. 'The user is thereby ensnared within the virtual space merely by the force of their desire for spectacle' (Barnes, 1997). I guess this is also what sells news to the general public, which the media obviously use to their advantage..

    Power does in fact belong to those that we chose to give it to, and in the case of Twitter it is most definitely the celebs.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)