Twitter:

Twitter shows some of the properties brought up in the readings about new media and new literacies like, for example, (to begin with some mentioned by Kress) the turn away from writing belonging primarily to books and towards the predominance of screens as the main support for the written text; the particular format design and 140-character limit requiring the expression of thoughts to fit into that ‘size’; and the way a tweet can include a hyperlink and an image, combining the modalities of text, images and connections to websites, which will probably include further audio-visual content.  This medium also facilitates convergence culture (Jenkins) and constitutes a kind of remix as described by Lessig (Lankshear & Knobel).  The way language is used in Twitter, given its instantaneous publication power that makes it prone to spontaneous expression, is characterised by colloquial and informal registers and, of course, brevity.  This last requirement tweets have to fulfil leads to, perhaps, more selective vocabulary use, but is also conducive to prioritising the exploitation of readers’ between-the-lines understanding.

Pablo Iglesias of Podemos- tweeting

 What fascinates me about Twitter is the protagonism it has taken on in politics.  In Spain, a new political force, Podemos (“We can”), appeared on the scene in 2014 and within months managed win 5 seats for the Spanish representation in the European Parliaments and later became a strong rival for the traditional 2 parties that have governed Spain since Franco’s dictatorship in the 1970’s; this surprising (even shocking for many) development sprang from  Podemos’ adopting an organised strategy for social networking, in particular through Twitter. And the most outstanding twist to the story of how writing through new technologies is evolving is U.S. president-elect’s use of Twitter to communicate government policy, argue, campaign, combined with conveying what often “should” be private thoughts of an individual.

Trump, tweeting