With great tweets comes great responsibility...

Definition of power in English:

power

NOUN

mass noun

The capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events.

‘a political process that offers people power over their own lives’

‘she had me in her power’ 

(Oxford Living Dictionaries, 2017)

Like most people, when I think of power I think of things like politicians, leaders, people or places or things that are strong, or have some sort of authority. But through the readings and lectures I have come to realise that power is not a thing, nor is it something that a person creates. (Kuttainen)

Power is a relational effect of social interaction. Through networks and the geographies of space and place power is formed.

This is reflected through Twitter, my chosen virtual network.

Twitter is an online social networking service where users post and interact with messages, "tweets", restricted to 140 characters. (Twitter, 2017)

Whilst I had definitely heard of twitter before, this was my first time using it and boy was it interesting. It was surprising to me just how large of a space this virtual network actually was. I was expecting a mundane blog of people’s daily lives not exceeding 140 characters, but what I actually received was way more than my imagination could have stretched. Any genre I could think of could be searched or found on the ‘Twittersphere’ but whilst that opened a mountain of possibility’s it also alarmed me because of the ‘big brother effect’. (Orwell, 1949).The idea that twitter is a panopticon is definitely one that makes it more of a space than a place.  

That aside, everyday people and celebrities can utilize the instant post factor of Twitter to generate power. They capture the reader’s attention, using the different modalities of power. (i.e. domination, seduction, authority, cohesion, manipulation) (Allen, 2003).

Kendall Jenner Promoting Kylie Jenner (Jenner, K. 2017)

You can see instances of seduction in a sexually implicit photo with a suggestive caption, you can see cohesion in the endorsement of a certain product or person, through a  person who already had got status, the poster itself already “on trend”, therefore endorsing and promoting the other person or product. Manipulation is shown through the content people or corporations post, or sometimes don't post.  

There are countless other examples I could have listed as I trawled through different feeds and comment threads. But one theme is evident throughout people use social media and twitter as a tool to generate and maintain power even if its subconscious.

References

Allen, J. (2003). The lost geographies of power. Malden : Blackwell Publishers.

Jenner, K. (2017, August 4). Twitter. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/KendallJenner/status/893520624575959040.

Kuttainen, V. (n.d.). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives, and the making of a place, lecture 2: Power. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from hhttp://learnjcu.edu.au.

Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. London: Secker and Warburg.

Oxford Living Dictionaries. (2017). Retrieved from Oxford Living Dictionaries: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/power
Twitter. (2017, August 10). Retrieved from Wikepedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter