Re:The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media
by onion2k on Thursday September 20, 2018 @03:02AM
(#18030322)
That certainly explains your thinking a bit better. Thanks.
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.
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.