A Tweet for Democracy
Twitter first started in March of 2006 as an online social networking site where users can send and read short messages that contain only 140 characters. Since then it has grown to 271 million users with 500 million tweets being sent each day. The mission of twitter is to, "give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers." Although twitter is a land of selfies, misspelled names on Starbuck's cups, and hash tags, it has also become a strong platform for new democratic ideas and free speech.
One public forum where important ideas are discussed is called black twitter. Black twitter is a cultural identity on twitter where tweets are focused on issues that are important to the black community. Black twitter has speared many successful campaigns. For example, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of any wrong doing it was rumored that there would be a book deal with one of the jurors from the trial. When the black twitter community caught word of it, they started a campaign against it which in affect put enough pressure on the deal for it to drop. Using #paulasbestdishes, they protested companies that sold Paula Deen products causing some to stop selling the products.
Twitter creates a platform where people are able to express their opinions on how their free speech is being infringed upon. A lot of the time controversial events are put out. #freethenipple is an example of people using twitter to put out the word about fighting for rights. The hash tag stands for fighting for women's right to be topless just like men. In just four days it was mentioned 10,039 times. And every time it was mentioned the idea was be spread to others, because it was not only the people who mentioned it that saw it or the people that were interested, everyone who mentioned it had followers and those followers saw it.
Twitter has been banned in many countries all over the world because as a whole it refuses to take down sensitive material. Questions have been asked about whether or not Twitter should be required to take down the account that showed the video of the beheading of the American journalist. The fact that Twitter's mission is to allow for the expression of ideas and that it is a private company that decides what to censor, keeps it so that users do not have to be afraid of their posts being suppressed.
With users all over the world Twitter allows for people to express their ideas in a wide spread way that reaches people everywhere. Controversial ideas are spread to people who might not even think they are interested, but have their eyes caught by a post that they saw and end up reposting it. Twitter promotes democracy by allowing people all over the world to share their opinions.
One public forum where important ideas are discussed is called black twitter. Black twitter is a cultural identity on twitter where tweets are focused on issues that are important to the black community. Black twitter has speared many successful campaigns. For example, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of any wrong doing it was rumored that there would be a book deal with one of the jurors from the trial. When the black twitter community caught word of it, they started a campaign against it which in affect put enough pressure on the deal for it to drop. Using #paulasbestdishes, they protested companies that sold Paula Deen products causing some to stop selling the products.
Twitter creates a platform where people are able to express their opinions on how their free speech is being infringed upon. A lot of the time controversial events are put out. #freethenipple is an example of people using twitter to put out the word about fighting for rights. The hash tag stands for fighting for women's right to be topless just like men. In just four days it was mentioned 10,039 times. And every time it was mentioned the idea was be spread to others, because it was not only the people who mentioned it that saw it or the people that were interested, everyone who mentioned it had followers and those followers saw it.
Twitter has been banned in many countries all over the world because as a whole it refuses to take down sensitive material. Questions have been asked about whether or not Twitter should be required to take down the account that showed the video of the beheading of the American journalist. The fact that Twitter's mission is to allow for the expression of ideas and that it is a private company that decides what to censor, keeps it so that users do not have to be afraid of their posts being suppressed.
With users all over the world Twitter allows for people to express their ideas in a wide spread way that reaches people everywhere. Controversial ideas are spread to people who might not even think they are interested, but have their eyes caught by a post that they saw and end up reposting it. Twitter promotes democracy by allowing people all over the world to share their opinions.