Twitter doesn't run public conversation.

[ancianita]

See this?

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Looks impressive, right? Wrong.


Only 17 million out of 325 million people in the U.S. have public accounts. That's IT.

Only 10% of those public account holders create 80% of tweets. 1.7 million out of 325 million Americans. That's IT.

Trump's account fails to increase Twitter accounts. Only 19% of accounts follow his. 26% of accounts follow Obama's.

When Pew says that 1 in 5 Twitter users follow Trump, that's a fly on America's apple pie. That's IT.

Twitter is not a public temperature gauge.

Twitter's not a valid, reliable poll.

Twitter is not coherent or analytical. It cares not for history or context.

Twitter is the cult of clever.

Yet cult-of-clever Twitter is the tail that wags the retweet and media coverage dog,
which is only amounts to 5 million TV prime time viewers. That's IT.

Twitter is stupidly, stupidly overrated by media. Cable news, too.

When we really want to understand something, we need to READ.

[cynatnite]

1. As with any venue...

you have to sift and choose what's worth reading and what's not. What's worth watching and what's not.

It's on us to be the discriminators as to the quality of what we read, watch, follow, tweet or whatever the case may be.

[ancianita]

2. Absolutely. Great definition of democratic responsibility. We mustn't conflate popularity with good

analysis, consensus, conventional wisdom or even common sense.

The biased preference for sound bite sources is the bane of good broadcast journalism.

[Moostache]

3. Twitter serves the equivalent of media crack cocaine

Addictive, easy to take bite-sized bits of easy money....
They LOVE Trump and his tweets.

They have daily, even hourly stories that result in:
1) OMG...here is the latest absurd idea to ooze out of the idiot-in-chief's head
2) convene a panel of 3-6 people to 'discuss' the outrage for the next 45 minutes
3) If a new outrage has not been provided, recap the panels' positions until the top of the hour
4) Start new 'program' and repeat 1 through 3, subbing in new tweets as they become available.

No serious follow up.
No serious discussion of the damage this does to the nation.
No work to help contextualize this inanity.

Fox News lies and spreads propaganda as thought control for their "base".
The rest of the media has essentially quit doing journalism and became a bad high school click of people obsessed with one person's appearance, thoughts, words and acts.

The media cannot quit and Trump is an effective drug dealer. He knows there are no consequences for him, that he can literally say ANYTHING and he is safe as a kitten.

Excuse me while I go projectile vomit some more...

[ancianita]

4. You've laid out the map.It's the one we need for assaying the body politic in the GOTV phase of 2020