Twitter Dissertation

For my final year dissertation, I’m looking at how people use Twitter to keep up to date with what is happening in the world.

Extracted from the introduction:

“This paper will discuss the growing trend of people who are accessing and interacting with news directly through twitter, or using twitter alongside traditional media to broaden their understanding of current events – and thus make them more active citizens.

This project is built on the rationale that Twitter has grown well beyond its initial expectations and objectives, and proved to be useful for more than simply social networking. It is my experience and belief that Twitter is being increasingly used to keep people up to date with current affairs and events.

Breaking and spreading news on browser-based applications like twitter has become the norm, and something that young people particularly find it easy to engage in. It has also created communities where views can be exchanged and discussions taken part in. Online campaigning and protests are becoming more popular and being organised on Twitter. In this way, social media is almost creating a new generation of activists.

The aim of this paper is to discover how Twitter has changed the way that people access and interact with news insofar as finding out how people use it to get their news, how much they ‘share’ on social media and participate in online communities, and how they participate in broader political issues.

The paper will also be looking at where traditional media fits in to this. The methodological approach of this paper is to ask people directly how they consume media and to what extent they interact with news – via a social survey. It will find out how much, if at all, traditional media has been sidelined in favour of new media like Twitter for finding out about and understanding current affairs, and whether this shift has increased active citizenry.”

I am looking at people aged 16-75 and closely studying the behaviour of those who use social media, in the context of their age. Eg, do younger people use twitter to follow celebrities? Do older people interact with it in a different way? Do specific age groups tend to utilise social media alongside traditional media, or attribute more importance to one or the other?