Twitter has its dangers and its not just privacy concerns. Scientists at USC are finding that fast news bulletins with only 140 characters or less is not an effective way for people to fully understand the news. The AP wire-style tweet is just too short for people to process... especially young people. The research suggest that it can affect young people's "moral compass" because human suffering becomes commonplace, numeric and unreal. The readers of the tweets do not delve into the true repercussions of tragedy and thus can become immune to feeling other's suffering.
If this is true... and it makes some sense... it's an important wake-up call. Twitter can be a great way to interact with friends in a new way, follow
celebrities, make online friends and keep up with the news, but it can also backfire!
It backfires because we do not internalize the information.
So I ask this question: does this also affect our reaction to political stories?
Does it make us less likely to want to become involved in the political process?
Constant updates on politics might not faze the political news junkie, but might quickly make others disenchanted. Can the news overexpose itself? Just like celebrities can? It's an interesting proposition. Perhaps, too much information is just that--too much information. Maybe informing followers of twitter feeds too much information and minutae is a terrible idea.
It takes me back to the presidential election coverage. It went on forever and ever on cable news networks for more than one year. Coverage was nonstop, around the clock from every single angle imaginable. Again, the political news junkies thrived on it, but many people were clear that they had their fill and were just not paying attention anymore.
Could such an invasive platform like news updates on Twitter make the situation worse?
It's an interesting thought and one we should pay attention to.
Read about the study here.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/mentalhealth/04/14/twitter.study/index.html?eref=rss_latest
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I think you definitely have valid points with this idea. I agree with you too much information is what it is. I recently got a Twitter account and began following the University of Utah, the New York Times, and a couple other current events accounts. After just a couple days I deleted them from my Following because there was too much information and it's true--I was immune to what they were saying. When you see something over and over you begin to ignore it. It was almost like I had selective reading. If I saw my Twitter Timeline with mostly New York Times Logos, I didn't really read it, but when I saw the occasional friend's update then I would read just that. It is very similar to the idea that during the campaigns there is so much coverage on television that it begins to be too much. I think using Twitter for news and politics can definitly backfire, and people should be careful with that. I also wonder if Twitter will ever consider raising the character total to 175 or 200 in the future. 140 characters is so short, it's hard to get out what you are trying to say. We'll see...
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