Today, technology has progressed a lot, and with that, we are able to see huge development of social networking in today’s world. Millions of users from all around the world are connected to each other through the different meant of social networking. But, as per one of the research reports of the Technological Department of the United States in 2012, it was found that even teenagers are now having Facebook and Twitter accounts. They are found to be operating these websites many times in a day (Tehan, 2013). Hence, this seems to be impacting education in their lives. We shall focus our research more on Twitter, and try to find out the positive and negative consequences associated with operating Twitter.
- General Topic: Social Networking
- Time Span: 2010 and onward
- Place: All the nations around the world
- Person or Group: Youth; College Age and Professionals
- Research Questions: Impact of social media; advantage of using Twitter; impact on organizations
What is Twitter? How did it come into existence?
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service, which enables the users of Twitter to send and read small messages of about 160 characters, better known as tweets. These tweets are just like the texts that are posted on the given user’s profile page, and anyone who is interested to read those text messages, need to first follow the given user. They are thereby known as followers of that particular user. If we observe back into the time, then it was difficult for us to know about any events right at the moment of the occurrence of that event.
For example, if we consider the occurrence of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack then people came to know about it through either television news, or through some phone calls, or through live presence. But, today, with the help of Twitter, we are able to know about any news or events within fractions of seconds after the actual occurrence of those events. Anyone on Twitter would simply text about the event and the relevant details in a short message, which would then be passed all over the world.
People therefore today are not surprised about any news that they receive after one day or after long period of time, because they are already aware about such news and incidents, which have occurred in any part of the world. Thus, twitter turns out to be a powerful tool for reporting any current and breaking news of the day. Twitter wasn’t designed originally for this purpose, but the incident of earthquake in California, turned around the entire concept of twitter (Beer, 2008).
Why we use it?
Today, twitter is now introduced inside the classroom, for helping the students of several colleges and universities in many different ways. The way of interactions are changing, and along with it even the college management need to adapt to the new ways of interacting.
Twitter is one such facility, through which both the tutors and the students can interact with each other in a better way. It also becomes easy for the tutor to post any assignments and project details or any other course-related content on Twitter. This would help the entire group of students to download those details and work on it accordingly.
Twitter's impact on society
Positive Consequences
Recent research studies have concluded that, introducing Twitter inside classroom have resulted into better communication between the staff and the students. It has also helped the shy students to engage themselves into the conversation in a better way. Their participation levels have increased and even their overall subject grades have improved. There are also restaurants, which are now posting their recipes on twitter, in order to create more awareness amongst the people. People now love to get such shared information, because it is easier, more convenient, and most important it is totally free to them. There could be no other better way to share information to such a large group of people all over the world (Dourish & Anderson, 2006). All these messages could be easily re-tweeted, so that one user can share other user’s information to his networking people. Looking from the societal and technological perspective, it has replaced email services to a greater extent. Small messages could convey better business meanings. The speed of delivery and instant communication and the reduction in paper costs will help any organization to a greater extent. People are now finding effective ways to communicate in a better way; they want to replace the seeing and talking conversation manner, and want to communicate more through technological systems.
These systems could include desktop systems, laptops, iPads, notebooks, smart phones, and many others. An abbreviated form of speech has replaced the traditional way of talking to one another. People now believe more into instant messaging concept, and Twitter is the best alternative available to such an issue. People could plan their events in a better way, by communicating through their group of friends. They can establish new connections, which could help them in future from the business perspective.
People come into touch with newer faces, and thereby they establish new relationships. This would mean that, a person sitting in US, could make a friend who is sitting in Australia or any other South-East Asian nations. Hence, the distance is becoming shorter, which in turn saves time and costs for them (Nissenbaum, 2010).
Negative Consequences
They should understand the meaningful relationships of the real world rather than the false casual relationships developed on Twitter. Recently, the issues of Cyber Bullying have increased a lot, due to which terrorist activities have increased a lot. People are no longer safe on such social networking websites. Further, the productivity of the employees decreases, due to such distractions (Lambert et al., 2008). Hence, in order to remain safe and secure, people need to spend only a limited period of time on Twitter.
Conclusion
People can share their comments and views, but they should not display their inner feelings. They can develop relationships only after properly verifying their friends and other groups of people. This will help them to remain safe on such social networking sites.
Feedback for Peer
After reviewing the peer’s work, I have found that, it is necessary to work upon the primary target audience. The theme and research questions are good, but it is still important to narrow it down, in order to carry out appropriate research. Further, little bit of brain storming will be required for determining the time period and the research methodologies. This will help him to do a proper research with his topic. On the other hand, he has beautifully described the topic for engaging the audience. In addition, he can think upon adding more statistics so as to support his arguments and conclusion.
References
Beer, D. D. (2008). Social networking sites - Revisiting the story so far: A response to danah boyd & Nicole Ellison. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 13(2), 516-529.
Dourish, P., and Anderson, K. (2006). Collective information practice: exploring privacy and security as social and cultural phenomena. Human-computer interaction, 21(3), 319-342.
Nissenbaum, H. (2010). Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Tehan, R. (2013). Cyber-security: Authoritative Reports and Resources. Washington, DC: U.S.
Lambert, P., Scourfield, J., Smalley, N., and Jones, R. (2008). The social context of school bullying: evidence from a survey of children in South Wales. Research Papers in Education, 23(3), 269-291.
