It's not about the legitimacy of the tweet or even factualness.

When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term.

For example, there's a lot of social justice clamour over things like award shows lately. The thing is, people don't care that-that much. They may a little, they might have some nuanced ideas one way or another, but the 'journalist' reporting will say: "People are really upset about so-and-so's comments" - and then show a few tweets of either random people or celebs.

Individual tweets are not remotely representative of anything, and yet they are used as 'representative' data points all the time.

Not only do journos do this in purpose (i.e. willfully misrepresenting) but I think they are actually influenced by the Twitterverse. I really do think that many in the press think that Twitter is real or representative.

If you're reading things that say "Three people tweeted about this therefore it's fact" then sure, you're reading something that's nonsense. Articles need more than that to demonstrate there's a groundswell of opinion around something. But Twitter is no different to any vox populi source in that regard - in the things I read I don't think tweets are added to articles to prove anything; they're there for color and emotional connection. Without referencing the real world in their work reporters would write very bland and inhuman articles that would be horrible to read for most of their audience.

I think I'd rather read a properly researched article with those tweets than one without them. If the article isn't properly researched then no amount of tweets is going to rescue it.

2. A person can have at most one spot on a sidewalk, but multiple Twitter accounts.

3. People can organize an outpouring of opinion I Twitter. "Let's all tweet this at the same time" you can't organize happening to be on a sidewalk when the journo comes looking.

4. There is a certain personality type that joins Twitter. This is not the case to the same extent for sidewalks.

5. Tweet speed among Twitter users is more different (less than one to hundreds per day) than time spent walking sidewalks.

6. People on sidewalks are ASKED their opinion. People on Twitter speak without being asked. The people who aren't talking about a subject will have less strong views.

7. People on the sidewalk are in the same country as the journalist.

What do you think when you read an article in a newspaper saying "an anonymous source at the state department who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation"? News organizations know how to make something out of nothing in print as well as online - so you're better off focusing on the identity of the speaker than the medium

They are generally giving out specific facts.

Yes, of course those things are generally about manipulations of some kind, but there are protocols involved, and those 'anon facts' generally have to be true. In these situations, the news organizations credibility is on the line. The more credible the entity, the more likely they've done their checking/double checking to corroborate etc..

Many legit stories break this way.

Again, yes, it's all about narrative ... but there's generally more meat to the narrative in those cases.

Tweets by individuals who are authoritative on something are also a different thing. If an actress says 'I faced harassment from several studio execs' - then this has some credibility as a statement.

But this is altogether different from the straw-man 'people are saying' types of stories which are very common. A daily occurrence.

The 'materially useful' tweets are a small thing.

Is it, though?

Does every journalist really "create controversies where there are none?"

Is every news story really an attempt to "divide society to get you hooked on news?"

Do you also believe meteorologists gin up their weather forecasts with storms for better ratings?

Don't confuse cynicism with intellectual rigor, please. The world - even media and social media - are more nuanced than that.

It's like saying all bankers are greedy, all politicians are corrupt, all doctors are stooges for big pharma, all police are psychopaths, etc. Maximal cynicism and minimal insight... it gets tedious after a while.

Yes.

>Is every news story really an attempt to "divide society to get you hooked on news?"

Maybe not every, but yes. Not only to get you hooked on news, also to advance certain political ideas which depend on the journalist/medium.

>Do you also believe meteorologists gin up their weather forecasts with storms for better ratings?

I do. I'm not saying they make up storms, but they could very well make things look more grave than they are so people listen to them.

When a journalist looking to craft a story quotes someone they've encountered personally, they had the pick of at most maybe 1000 people they spoke to that day. Likely far fewer - they have a story to finish and limited time. So while their quote will support the narrative they want to push, there's a limit to how far they can distort reality; if a view is rarer than 1/100, they likely won't find the quote they wanted.

Being able to sift 100 million people for the position they want changes that. We're used to assuming anything quoted by a journalist is, if not perfectly representative, then close to representative - a view that, while maybe not the majority, is held by something like that 1/100 or better. Twitter changes that.

You could go out on the street; but finding and then having someone say something on camera is -very- different to finding and showing a tweet. I feel pretty confident in saying that a lot of people tweet stuff they’d never say live in front of a camera.

Hence the argued bad practice of presenting tweets on news shows as well thought through and relevant opinions.

Why would they be irrelevant? It is opinion that people think. It migh be wrong, but they still vote on that, choose schools on that, make decisions and judgements about real life people around them etc.

"People are clamouring for more of X in Y" and then they show three tweets.

When really maybe nobody cares. Or maybe they care in the other direction entirely.

Secondly, even if they're real, how do you know that they're representative of anything? Twitter is global. US politics, for example, could be followed by Afghan kids. Why would US news care about likes from people half a world away?

Thirdly, there's a lot of dumb people around. There's several reasons old media is tightly curated, and not all of them are related to making money or to censorship. A good chunk of it is to not show (just) garbage.

Huge chunk of "old media" is garbage too, just with little bit better grammar. One thing that curation of old media was bubble too. It made people convinced that "nobody think that" while quite a lot of people actually think that. I don't mean outright censorship here, but the range of arguments and opinions being expressed was much smaller.

To some extend, I understand how ideologies can be dangerous and how their promotion in media threatens us. But you don't seem to object on the "this person is promoting ideology that leads to less freedom" grounds. You seem to object on the "these people should not matter" grounds.

Lastly, it US cared more about what Afghan kids like, US would be less cool about killing them and about destabilizing whole regions of world.

You can still get that while citing twitter, but you can also get those 1:1000 opinions that were impossible to find before, and make them look unreasonably common.

Mother said "if you can't say something nice don't say anything" maybe we need to move to "if you can't say things that are novel and well found then leave it be"?