Daily Post 1516
TWEETS – THE NEW LANGUAGE
Tweeters seems to the be new existential terminology for all of us. That is the only way we exist. If you don’t have a twitter handle you cease to exist. It is the convergence of all mass platforms into one, everything emanates out it and is consumed by all. Not that it was created in this manner, we have made it into one, as it meets all our requirements of communicating the masala without the mess and it sticks on fast and thick. From the simplest of your personal activities to even the message from the Prime Minister, all happens here.
This is most happening place and COVID-19 propelled this sort of a communication even further. President Trump has a liking for Twitter and most of his announcements and battles came out graphically on this platform and not on any official medium. Twitter and US Presidentspeak became one and same thing in last four years. When tweets become the only source of information from the US President with no need of any official source or authentication right on your smartphone, what choice does the media have. There have been days and months without White House media briefings. Interestingly, he made it into a slugfest couple of times.
What you can call as the democratisation of information, is the transformation which is unfolding right in front of our eyes. Democratisation as a process we all know is messy. When information gets into this mode, the normal channel democratic control is also missing. It is free for all. Everyone has to fight his or her battle and the rules of the game are convenient or difficult depending on how conversant you are with Twitter in particular and social media in general. Tweeters live and die by it. Tweets have landed people into problems of unimaginable kinds. But if you are a social media animal, this is your only turf.
It has made public personas out of nowhere and that is how there is more and more traction for it. It is a fact that in last few months lots of national narratives have been created out of it. Literally all debates are hashtags only. Tweets became the centre of controversy with Prashant Bhusan’s expressions, getting quoted all over the place and became the centre of judicial proceedings. For a commercial social media platform its free marketing. And now Kunal Kamra is on a tweeting spree, making even more waves than the earlier episode. Does the ease of medium decides what and how we write? Anyway, instantaneous dissemination is the killer.
PUBLIC DISCOURSE IS GETTING LIMITED TO TWITTER. WHAT A TRAGEDY!
Sanjay Sahay