The impact of Twitter on our social lives
Image: virtual social network
Our entire world is
constituted of place and space, whose functions are for security and freedom (Tuan, 1977, p.3). Thus, we naturally try to seek
the belonging with certain places. Tuan (1977, pp.5-6) mentioned that there
are a couple of ways to attach the meaning to place and space: the range of
experience or knowledge, biological aspects, and culture. In my case, I can
perceive the familiar places differently in comparison with my childhood by the
combination of accumulated life experiences and acquired knowledge. I also feel
some of places are more familiar to me than others because of good memories
through life experiences.
Thanks to advanced technology,
we can be familiarised with place and space not only on the real world but also
on the virtual world in modern age. Importantly, the main virtual network here is
Twitter whose users are more than 500 million across the world on 2014 and it
is still growing dramatically (Gorrell & Bontcheva, 2014). I also created my
Twitter account more than three years ago, and I have realised that there are
two main functions of Twitter. The first function is to express own opinions
easily and the second one is to have a connection with many people in a short
period compared with other virtual network such as Facebook.
At the same time, if people
are more connections on Twitter, they have more influential. Thus, Twitter has
also modalities of power of domination (Allen, 2013). That is because the power
is not distributed equally even though it is on the virtual network. From these
points, I have perceived Twitter as an empowering feature. In contrast, if we
do not have many connections on Twitter, it can be disempowering. In fact, some
of connections are weak links (Kuttainen, 2017), which refers to the connection
that is not well connected. That is because we can connect the person, even if
we have not met in the real world. Regardless of these features, some
researchers worry about negative aspects of online social network.
Turkle (2012) stressed the
view that this kind of online social network has changed our social lives. One
of the situations Turkle (2012) described was, even if we meet up together, we
tend to face up with the virtual network on the screen instead of having face
to face conversation. It arises the question that if we are really connected in
the real world at this occasion.
In my point of view, although Twitter
provides more ways to connect people than before, it generates some of
controversial factors. One of controversial factor is based on the virtual
connection on the online network. Especially some young people try to connect
as many people as possible on the virtual world, although they do not know some
of them in the reality. Another factor is that some of them create own accounts
anonymously to hide their real identity. To do so, they can express negative
opinions toward society, school, friends and so on. Above all, virtual network
has changed the sense of place and space from the original concept for better
or for worse. Therefore, it is good time to reflect of space and place
including the connection with other people and the effects to us on the virtual
world.
References
Allen, J. (2013). Lost
geographies of power. Melbourne, Australia: Blackwell Publishers.
Gorrell, G., & Bontcheva, K. (2014). Classifying Twitter
favorites: Like bookmark, or thanks?. Association
for information science and technology, 67(1), 17-25. doi:
10.1002/asi.23352
Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002:
Our space: Networks, narratives, and the making of place, lecture 2: Power. [PowerPoint
slides]. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
Tuan, Y. (1977). Space
and place: The perspective of experience. London, England:
Edward Arnold
Turkle, S. (2012, February). Connected but not alone? [video file].
Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together
Virtual social network (2017). Retrieved from https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-advertise-my-social-network
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