Twitter: How Important is it to Ones Media Diet?

[_honorentheos]

I'm curious how many people on this board are active on Twitter?

If possible, I'd be interested in hearing others answers to the following:

How often do you check Twitter for information?

Do you have a Twitter account?

If yes, how many people are you following?

Roughly how much of your news/information diet originates from Twitter? This could include not just Twitter being a primary source of information but also stories you were first made aware of via Twitter that led you to search out more journalistic sources.

My own answers:

How often do you check Twitter for information?
Only when someone links to it, probably 95% of that originating from here and the rest from news articles.

Do you have a Twitter account?
No.

If yes, how many people are you following?
N/A

Roughly how much of your news/information diet originates from Twitter?
Less than 5%. There are occasional links posted here that will lead me from Twitter to other sources. Otherwise it would be zero.

[_huckelberry]

Honorentheos, my answers to your questions match yours.
My wife follows Twitter some and on infrequent occasions she notices a story which I look up in some other source.
I find some value in this message board from people bringing up stories worth further investigation.

[_EAllusion]

I think this question is a bit tricky in that there is media that originates on Twitter and media where Twitter is merely the platform to conveniently access it. Following a newspaper's Twitter vs. having a paper copy in your hand is mostly a formatting difference. It's like asking what % of your news information comes from google. In one sense, almost none of it. In another, almost all of it. It's just the road to get you to your destination. At the same time, Twitter follows curates and generates content. While I can't think of any meaningful example of google providing news to me, I can think of journalists whose primary work first or more expansively exists on Twitter before hitting another publication. That's closer to the sense I have for "getting news from Twitter" but doesn't quite match up with your definition.

In short, this is a real tough question to answer.

[_EAllusion]

One of the wild things about Twitter is that, since many journalists are there having conversations, you get a kind of window into who knows their stuff and who are idiots are in a way that really didn't exist prior to the advent of this kind of technology. This meta-news provides context to news in a way that is hard to replicate elsewhere.

In terms of news I get either because it was broken directly via Twitter or because it was obscure sans Twitter's amplification, I'd guess maybe 20%?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

How often do you check Twitter for information?

- Only when someone links to a Twitter post. I never go to Twitter to peruse it for information.

Do you have a Twitter account?

- I do because for whatever reason I can't see Twitter unless I'm logged into an account. I don't really get it.

If yes, how many people are you following?

- Zero. Heh.

Roughly how much of your news/information diet originates from Twitter? This could include not just Twitter being a primary source of information but also stories you were first made aware of via Twitter that led you to search out more journalistic sources.

- I'm not really sure because so many articles link to tweets. It's really an uncertain quantity to me.

> Doc

[_EAllusion]

I don't watch cable news that often, but when I do so, I never do it for purposes of learning about the news. If I seek it out intentionally, it's to see the content and tone of coverage to understand what people are watching and how the media a large % of people consume is treating it. I'm not after news so much as news about the news. It's a small % of whatever it is I'm taking in, but I don't even know how to enter that into a question like this.

[_Some Schmo]

My answers are essentially the same as yours, honor, although I'd say the percentage of my time there is even lower. They lost me with the names years ago (Twitter and tweet... “F” off). Besides, actually limiting the number of characters is enforcing a kind of shorthand laziness that I am not down with, not when it comes to language syntax. I'm often distracted by the crappy writing, and I think it's fair to say that it's partially foisted on people by the platform. I see some people try to make the best of it, but if you're trying to communicate things precisely, it's better to avoid Twitter at all costs. We're not birds.

I regret the small amount of time I spent on Facebook, and I refuse to make the same mistake with Twitter. The vast majority of tweets I see are embedded in other web pages, news articles mostly.

[_Gunnar]

My answers too are essentially the same as honor's. I have neither a Twitter account nor a Facebook account, though my daughter interacts regularly with Facebook -- mostly with her friends and other family members scattered across the country. She is good about sharing interesting feedback from our extended family and other sources with me, and I appreciate that. I won't rule out ever establishing a Facebook account of my own, though. I haven't decided whether or not I really want to do that yet.

[_Jersey Girl]

I don't have a Twitter account. The only time I really see what's on there is if someone links to it from here. I sometimes check on what Trump is saying so I can see it for myself instead of taking it as gospel second hand.

[_Some Schmo]

I don't have a Twitter account. The only time I really see what's on there is if someone links to it from here. I sometimes check on what Trump is saying so I can see it for myself instead of taking it as gospel second hand.

Trump is the one person whose words have a better chance than anyone's of becoming more accurate if paraphrased by someone else.