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UniversalMomentum t1_ixq2kh0 wrote

I don't see how studying Twitter is real science. you may as well go to the grocery store and study the Tabloid aisle.

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fractalfalcon OP t1_ixq9b98 wrote

I think the denial of how impactful poorly regulated social media can be is part of the reason we ended up in a lot of the mess of the last ten years. Is Twitter the real world, no, of course not. But it can be remarkably influential in some areas and also remarkably damaging.

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soztech t1_ixqk2vr wrote

>poorly regulated social media

Because censoreship has always lead to great things!

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abaoabao2010 t1_ixqq5rz wrote

It actually has, and always will.

For example, peer review is essentially crowd censorship of shitposts, but specifically by people in the field. That's why papers that you can find are usually more reliable than random twitter posts.

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GiantRiverSquid t1_ixqqas0 wrote

I don't understand why more people don't just pull up their bootstraps and create their OWN social media platform.

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Boom-light t1_ixqt2p9 wrote

Because Twitter sways public opinion. Which results in science being de-legitimized for large portions of the population. Which leads to actions that make climate change worse.

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DryOrganization7429 t1_ixrbc14 wrote

Twitter is also getting much worse with accounts of conspiracy idiots and generally nasty people reinstating

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exoduas t1_ixqa5ck wrote

Pretty ignorant take. Social media is widely used by a lot of people, businesses, governments, interest groups etc. to communicate. The days of "the internet isn’t real" are over. Its a hugely influential part of society and it should obviously be studied just like other parts. What happens on the internet and twitter is obviously having a direct impact on the world and smugly claiming otherwise wont change that. There are groups who have long realized the potential to influence people over the internet and they are taking full advantage of it. Thinking it doesn’t matter is a big mistake.

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abaoabao2010 t1_ixqpu34 wrote

People are dumb.

People vote with their wallets.

Studying the behaviors of dumb people is not just real science, it's extremely impactful science.

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Pirateangel113 t1_ixq8xqj wrote

they are studying how stupidity spreads And twitter just so happens to be where all the village idiots have flocked to.

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helm t1_ixqkbno wrote

And how did Brexit happen?

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zazaza89 t1_ixr24s9 wrote

When I was in grad school I did a study which included a quantitative component on Twitter sentiment and an ethnographic component where I actually found tweeps and interviewed them.

The result showed that many of the people tweeting about this particular topic were real, but that in the case I was studying, none of the interactions led to any real world change (I was looking at an anti-corruption campaign by a certain police force. While many people reported corruption via Twitter as instructed, nothing was ever done with their reports).

If I had only looked at Twitter and not gone out into the field, the result would have looked very different. Instead it revealed that this was a clear PR campaign by the police force, not a serious attempt to root out corrupt behavior.

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Veneck t1_ixqtugt wrote

Twitter is like going to the human zoo, you study the animals

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Noname_acc t1_ixt7ul3 wrote

A president was literally memed into office 6 years ago.

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49thDipper t1_ixtty9o wrote

Twitter swings elections. Studying that is very worthwhile.

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