In April 2009, the well respected New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd asked the founders of Twitter: “Did you know you were designing a toy for bored celebrities and high-school girls?”
Her dismissive approach towards the micro-blogging service captures the attitude of many journalists to Twitter.
This negative reaction to a new communication technology is nothing new, say researchers From San Diego State University.
In a paper just published by New Media & Society (subscription required), Noah Arceneaux and Amy Schmitz Weiss found that the public response to Twitter is similar to earlier communication technologies such as the telegraph or radio.
In “Seems stupid until you try it: Press coverage of Twitter 2006-9″, they conclude that:
Every major form of electronic communication, from the telegraph to the internet, has been greeted with ambivalence, though the preponderance of positive press coverage revealed by this research suggests that the skepticism over Twitter will not slow its diffusion and commercial adoption.
For the study, the researchers analysed media coverage of Twitter from March 2006 to March 2009, looking at a sample of newspapers, news agency copy, magazines and blogs.
They found that most stories mentioned at least some of the benefits of Twitter. The positive themes were:
- New sensibility: The steady stream of real-time messages creates a new form of social awareness. I have applied this to news, describing it as “ambient journalism“
- Commercial use: The use of Twitter for promotional offers, ads or to communicate with customers
- Civic use: Twitter as a platform for participatory democracy, mobilising people or distribute emergency updates
Negative stories were in a minority, and the researchers were surprised that only a few stories could be labeled as entirely negative. The negative themes were:
- Information overload: Twitter as a torrent of useless information
- Acceptable practices: A focus on the etiquette for microblogging and what wasn’t acceptable behaviour
- Unanticipated consequences: The use of Twitter for spam or identity theft
Arceneaux and Schmitz Weiss conclude that media coverage of Twitter follows a similar pattern to the reaction to older communication technologies.
For example, the question over what is acceptable on Twitter echoes debates over the appropriate use of the telephone. The researchers write that:
Technologies, such as Twitter today and the telegraph in the past, inspire negative responses because they disrupt established concepts of communication, prevailing notions of space and time and the distinction between public and private spheres.
Despite some vocal skepticism, such as the quote from Dowd, the research found “that newspapers, magazines and blogs have promoted and actively encouraged Twitter’s diffusion”.
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