Twitter is what Twitter does....

Twitter has been around for some time now. It’s a source for those who enjoy writing, connecting, marketing, texting, exploring, you name it. It’s basically everything I just named in one. Twitter is a social media outlet but can be way more than that. Users sign up on Twitter to get out there and learn about things. Most teens use twitter just for instant messaging because of how fast and straight to the point it is. Having a profile gives the users that ability to brand themselves and gain followers based on how interesting they are. That’s really how it works, you sign up and you follow users that you may find interesting and from there you start tweeting. Within those 140 characters, that is when whatever you choose to say gets recognized. Now whether it is worth reading is solely up to the followers to follow you. 

Twitter is a nation wide platform that connects users all over to gather information. In this article Twitter was used as a journalistic tool. The Boston Marathon article revealed the two sides of twitter and how it served as different impact on users. What happened at the marathon took America for a surprise but right after the incident twitter took over. The reactions and comments made were nothing but facts that weren’t facts. Which makes it easier for people to believe that what they are saying is true when in reality it may not be. When the bombing happen a lot of people weren’t even aware of the situation until they logged on to twitter. Being that in this generation social media is the new source for all news, twitter is the first to get users attention. It immediately got the job done by sending out direct news from different new sources and lots of direct experiences from those who were there. 

In the article Egypt five years on: was it ever a “social media revolution” it helped get the story out about the overthrowing of the Egyptian president. No, twitter wasn’t the full reason he was overthrown, but yes, it definitely was an important factor.  The people of Egypt felt the need to use Twitter to broadcast all the protest that was going on. “Their online revolutionary spirit was infectious for those watching from afar.”  The number of tweets sky-rocketed per week as users began to pay homage using the hashtag #jan25. 

This past year as well as this current year, Twitter has done its best to deliver news about what is going on in America. Including: the unfortunate presidential campaign, the disasters happening across the country in Syria, and the controversial United Airlines story.  People on Twitter instantly jump on these stories and immediately tweet about it to get out there to the world. There are levels to twitter when it comes to news. When it firsts happens, all the tweets start off serious and informative then gradually it begins to be less benefical and more of a joke. People eventually start to make memes of pictures that are clearly not meant to be made fun of. When serious things happen it stays as a trending topic for a while then the people move on and wait for the next big story to surface. The cycle never changes and will continue to be the same. Twitter can be compared to an old saying “hearing it through the grapevine”, people get the information from one person and once it gets passed on, it is a complete different story. Information is tweeted about then after it gets retweeted a couple times, it is now a different topic. 

Twitter is a form of blogging or micro blogging. It is very simple to use, you broadcast your interest daily and people choose to follow and retweet. With only using 140 characters, it is easy to get your point across and actually have people understand you. It is a fun way to let the world know about yourself and get to know others without really knowing them. This why most celebrities have Twitter accounts, to connect with their fans and have them feel a little closer to them just by reading their daily tweets. 

Compared to the other social media platforms, Twitter is most used because of how instantaneous it is. It is more than just a simple tweet, it’s a marketing tool for those to promote their brands and see what the people like. It’s for those who love writing, and for those who don’t love writing but are curious about celebrities and others that influence them. It’s the perfect outlet to just connect. 

On my Twitter account I chose to follow @EllenDegeneres , the @NFL, and @CNN. My reason for following is solely because her show is all about giving back to those who are making differences in their communities and the people around them. A lot of people are famous today because of her; she invites YouTube stars on the show and builds them up. That inspires me because in a way, that relates to how I plan on becoming a teacher to inspire and educate youth. I followed the NFL because it has always been intriguing to me on how the actual sport is played because I could never understand it. The account is up to date with frequent news on players, draft picks and what’s to come from multiple teams in the upcoming seasons.  I am not a fan of CNN because I feel most of their information is mostly opinions. They are very informative and keeps me updated with the heavy amounts of news constantly uploaded daily. I do seem to always visit the page frequently on my personal account and find myself retweeting a lot of their posts. In this generation surprisingly, the news is what keeps alert of what is happening around us. Twitter is what keeps us connected to the news socially and is a valuable source that helps us come together as one.

Let Me Just say this experience was...

When creating the video for this project it wasn’t difficult but it was something the group had to really sit and think about. The content of the video was the most important we tried to convey through visuals. Communication was such a broad topic to communicate through video because at first it was difficult to understand how do we show the meaning of this word in a video without using words and making it understandable. In order for the group to fully understand how to show communication in the video, it was important to look up many types of examples of communication. When doing this, we found that we could discuss so many things and therefore understood the directions in which we can now go in. The research helped a lot and as a result was very useful. Working in this group each member worked just as hard to help successfully complete the task at hand. In receiving such a broad topic it made it a bit harder to find the right direction to at first but once the brainstorming, and group efforts came in, everything started to fall in place. 

As a group it was chosen to use happiness as a way of communication, it wasn’t that much of a struggle because after doing the research on different topics coming up with this idea came easy.  In using this topic of happiness, we took in to consideration that we had to be “overly dramatic” with showing happiness. Some of the clips used were examples of the girls being extremely hype and some were real actions being shown. Shooting the video wasn’t a struggle because the videos of each person used were things they did in their everyday lives. Like being with friends, coworkers, family members, and even playing with some pets.  Now editing the video, took a bit of time because this wasn’t something that each of us could say we were familiar with. Using the app IMovie was very much different from using it on your phone. On your phone the app is limited to certain things that it has on the computer. It took nearly a day for the group to get the video almost perfect and making sure the videos flowed well with each other. The editing was the most difficult, finding the right filters and music to go with certain videos was a bit tedious.  It was a trial and error process that was worth a great outcome.  

Using video as a tool of communication instead of writing is probably better to communicate because others can sometime understand the message behind anything by visually seeing it. Just like how some people are visual learners, this might work better. Video is a necessary tool of communication because it gives the viewer the chance of experiencing the topic themselves and interpreting it in their own way. Not saying that this may not be the case for writing but some people just have different preferences. Video is the number one tool for communication. It is more likely to sell a product using a commercial than having one read about it. Watching a commercial on television will draw you into the product more because as a viewer you are now visually seeing why you need to buy the product. Although reading about a specific product might work as well because when reading about it, it now begins to be more descriptive. Your mind starts to wander and imagine different images about the object. But for this particular project using video works well because of the content of the video. The public nature of the video did not affect the nature of the subject matter of the video because mostly all the clips that were chosen to be in the project would honestly go on any of the social media accounts of each of us in the group. The videos chosen to be posted publicly are most likely chosen for a reason and the same goes for the videos picked for this project. Because this was for class the fact that it was being posted publicly never mattered. The goal of this project was to create a video and successfully relate it back to the topics given. If the group didn’t choose happiness, it probably would have been a bit harder to create the video because of how personal other topics regarding communication could be. There were multiple ideas of how to communicate communication, including showing emotions such as: anger, happiness, and sadness. And if any other one of those examples were chosen the outcome for the video would have been much different. Finding the appropriate songs to go with the content of the video would’ve been a challenge and also getting the right footage to show that emotions would’ve been difficult. So therefore yes, in a way the public nature of the video did somewhat have an affect on the subject matter of the video.

As for the self-portrait experience, it was normal to complete because it was just as if it were a regular day. For most people recording yourself daily is very regular. With the new up-to-date social media outlets like Snap chat and Instagram, this is normal for people.  This is basically what a “selfie” is, just pictures and videos of yourself. For anyone this part of the project shouldn’t have been as difficult as the remainder of the project. Creating self-portraits of you should be easy for most and the rawness of it makes it even more natural. It tells a lot about a person and how they really are. Lastly there were no issues with posting the self-portraits individually and together on the IMovie app. Most of the issues as stated before, were just on editing the movie and creating transition. Also and making it look visually interesting to watch. Working with individuals to accomplish a common goal and create a video and such a difficult topic was definitely a great experience.