Reciprocal relationships are import in any form of community. Getting feedback and having the feeling of inclusion and purpose is one the main reasons people join communities. In Twitter, we see examples of this with retweeting, tagging, and following each other.
Another motivating factor in communities is entertainment. This concept in dominated in Twitter. This phycological fulfillment further puts the title of community on Twitter. Entertainment also gives the opportunity to extend your reach through retweets, which turns into more followers. This factor motivates people to gain more feedback.
Twitter is also a means of stress relief. Another important factor in communities. This can be achieved by simply going through your news feed and enjoying the subjects you come across, or from direct contact with other people about your situation.
Communities and Twitter are tied together in a sense that they are both successful through goals. Groups of people with common goals can work towards them more efficiently.
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ReplyDeleteNoah -- I think your point that Twitter can relieve stress is really interesting. I totally agree that being able to speak your mind is a way to relieve stress, but I wonder if Twitter is doing that for all users? I know that, for me, Tweeting can sometimes add stress -- I worry that I've said something stupid when I don't get likes, retweets, etc. I wonder if that has more to do with my general anxiety over social media, or if that low level stress exists for most of us.
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ReplyDeleteNoah - I found it intriguing to read your reasoning as to why Twitter is a community. I wouldn't argue that Twitter isn't a community because it is online; I think it is has the potential to be a community depending on the user. Like your first point, if someone constructs their feed to include like-minded people or topics they enjoy, they will (hopefully) be more interactive. Interestingly, I never found Twitter to be entertaining or stress relieving, which is probably due to the people I followed. As I mentioned in Zeke's post, I made the mistake of following multiple news sources that tweeted ALOT. Every time I went on Twitter, I only saw New York Times posts. I couldn't even find any of my friends tweets because NYT tweeted 100x an hour. Because of this, I stopped using Twitter. It wasn't entertaining or stress relieving at all. Maybe if I adjusted my followers and worked on being interactive I could find Twitter to be a more useful platform/community.
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