Alyssa Solano

ENGL 2089-043
3/15/16
Genre Analysis: Twitter
Among the many social media platforms available today, Twitter is one
of the best known and most widely used, surpassed only by Facebook and
YouTube ("U.S. Top Social Media Sites Visit Share 2015). As of December
2015, there were approximately 320 million active Twitter accounts, which
include those of politicians, celebrities, and organizations in addition to
private users ("Company | About."). Because of its great visibility and
widespread use, Twitter enables the rapid dissemination of information to a
very large audience and thereby lends itself to a great number of social
activism campaigns.
Twitter provides a framework for social interaction that is distinct from
other popular platforms in that it promotes interaction beyond the limits of
ones existing social circle. While its standard practice on Facebook to only
friend people one knows offline, its much more common to both follow and
interact with strangers on Twitter. This, coupled with the fact that far more
Twitter users choose not to associate their real names with their accounts
than do Facebook users, makes Twitter comparatively much less personal.
The relatively impersonal nature of Twitter allows many users a greater
freedom of expression than they find on Facebook, as the possibility of
incurring offline consequences for online activity decreases with the number
of personally known friends or followers. Of course, the removal of these

consequences also has the less desirable effect of providing a hospitable

environment for trolling and online harassment.
With relative anonymity and the enormous Twittersphere listening,
what can the average user actually do with 140 characters? Depending on
how well the user understands the rhetoric of Twitter, they could achieve
anything from sparking a global movement to being completely ignored. In
order to make a big impact, the first and often most significant hurdle a
Twitter user must overcome is figuring out how to get their tweet seen by a
large audience. If the tweet is posted to an account with few followers, it will
only appear on those few peoples home pages. There are a number of ways
a savvy Twitter user might overcome this.
The first option is to gain a large number of followers. While possible
for the average user to do, it requires a great deal of time and energy to
build a substantial and far-reaching following. This is only a viable option if
the user is willing to wait a few years before having a real impact and
dedicate a large number of hours to Twitter in the interim. A second option is
to have an account with a larger following signal boost a tweet by retweeting
it. As seen in Figure 1, an organization with about twelve thousand followers
greatly amplifies its message by appealing to a celebrity with about seven
million followers to retweet it. Attracting the attention of a willing celebrity
might be difficult, but this route is often much quicker and more attainable
than trying to build ones own following to a comparable size.

Figure 1: A high-follower account (right) garners many more views (as evidenced by
retweets and likes) for a tweet originally made by an account with fewer followers
(left).

The third and most common option is to take advantage of the hashtag
system. If the symbol # is put in front of a word or phrase, Twitter will sort
that tweet into a page full of tweets containing that tag, and users can
search for content by its tag. This allows users to gain views from anyone
searching through the tag, regardless of whether or not those people are
among their followers. In order to best capitalize on this system, users
should be aware of what the popular established tags are and use those
rather than coining new ones in order to maximize exposure.
After finding a mechanism of gaining exposure, an effective Twitter
user must know how to put a meaningful message into 140 characters.
While those with short messages may not face a challenge here, many
others must find a way around the character limit. Common solutions
include posting pictureswhich speak a thousand words, of courseand
linking to longer articles on other sites. This last case in particular has led to
the emergence of a strong streak of clickbait-style communication within the

genre of Twitter, as this sort of tweets effectiveness is dependent on the

audiences willingness to follow the link. Figure 2 gives an example of this
trend.

Figure 2: This tweets full effectiveness depends on the viewer following the link it
contains, and the author compels people to follow the link by stimulating their
curiosity. What is on the other side of the link? Youll have to click to find out, but
66 other people apparently found it worth retweeting.

In many ways, learning to use Twitter effectively is as challenging as

gaining professional literacy in a new subject. One must first understand
how to be heard on a crowded and enormously busy platform, and that often
requires more than a mere functional understanding of how the website
works. One must also learn how to communicate effectively with very few
words. Both proficiencies come only with time and experience, which makes
Twitter a difficult platform to use for people with little experience with Twitter
or with other social media sites. The majority of those who have managed to
establish a popular and influential presence on Twitter have done so through

the investment of considerable time and effort to understand the intricacies

of the new genre.

Works Cited
"Company | About." Twitter. Twitter, Inc., 1 Jan. 2016. Web. 6 Mar 2016.
Jenkins, Jack (jackmjenkins). Hey guys, you know why Cruz keeps saying
Ted Cruz dot org?
Because this is TedCruz.com. 28 Jan 2016, 7:07 PM. Tweet.
Orangutan Land Trust (orangulandtrust). @geekdantartique @jk_rowling
Nutella uses
deforestation-free Certified Sustainable Palm Oil. #orangutanfriendly.
27 Feb 2016, 3:30 AM. Tweet.
Rowling, J.K. (jk_rowling). Good to know. Orangutans are my joint favorite
animals (along with
otters). RT @geekdantartique @jk_rowling Nutella uses deforestationfree Certified Sustainable Palm Oil. #orangutanfriendly. 27 Feb 2016,
3:34 AM. Tweet.
"U.S. Top Social Media Sites Visit Share 2015" Statista. 1 Oct. 2015. Web. 06
Mar. 2016.
<http://www.statista.com/statistics/265773/market-share-of-the-mostpopular-social-media-websites-in-the-us/>.

Activism Profile: #SayHerName

In the years since social media became popular, many social justice
campaigns have taken advantage of the opportunities for visibility and
connection provided by social media platforms. One such campaign is the
#SayHerName movement, which is based on Twitter and arose in response
to a mistaken public perception that police brutality only affects men. The
#SayHerName campaign draws the publics attention to the disturbingly
large number of black women killed as a result of police brutality, and it is an
offshoot of the more prominent #BlackLivesMatter movement. The
campaigns visibility and enduring relevance make #SayHerName a positive
model for other awareness campaigns.
As with many movements based on Twitter, the primary goals of
#SayHerName are to spread information and to influence public opinion.
The former is particularly well-served by the structure of Twitter, which
allows many different users to contribute to the content of the
#SayHerName tag and build the tags popularity and visibility. The
campaign has gained considerable visibility through multiple occasions of the
tag trending on Twitter, usually in the aftermath of a death. By choosing
Twitter as its central platform, the campaign has given itself the tools it
needs to achieve its primary goals. Other campaigns can follow this example
by considering what they need most out of a social media platform and
shrewdly investing greater time and effort in establishing a presence on the

platform that best meets those needs. When running an activist campaign,
the adage Dont work hard, work smart holds true.
The #SayHerName campaign has mastered the art of working smart.
They have a nearly formulaic response to news of interest, and it consistently
packs a rhetorical punch. When a black woman is killed by police in America,
contributors to the #SayHerName movement always make a point to give
her name and often her backstory in discussions of her case, which
humanizes her and respects her personhood. The name of the movement
likely arose from frustration with media outlets that glossed over these
killings and neglected to provide the victims names (See Figure 1). By
making this effort to humanize these women, the movement generates more
attention and public outrage over their deaths, and this outrage fuels the
spread of their message. The increased name recognition also makes it
harder for many to selectively forget these women and to ignore how they
died. The emphasis on narrative over numbers in order to secure emotional
investment is one prominent feature of the campaign that can be readily
transferred to other activism campaigns.

Figure 1: A Twitter user expresses dismay with a news story that refers to the
recently deceased Joyce Curnell as woman instead of using her name.

Beyond simply amplifying these womens tragic stories, the

#SayHerName movement also spotlights their aftermaths. A large portion of
the tweets in this tag follow up on the legal cases (or lack thereof) that
resulted from their deaths, highlighting perceived problems not only in the
police force but in other parts of the criminal justice system and American
politics (See Figure 2). In these situations, it is common to link to news
sources in tweets to get around the character limit. Many other Twitterbased campaigns have made this a common practice, and it remains a sound
strategy for future campaigns to follow when trying to report longer stories.

Figure 2: A Twitter user links to a news story regarding the investigation of Sandra
Blands death.

Overall, the #SayHerName campaign has been successful in

establishing a tag that has achieved respectable visibility and remained
active over many months of use, two goals common to many social media
activism campaigns. Other campaigns could potentially reach these goals if
they modelled some key aspects after the successful strategies of
#SayHerName such as using the power of narrative to secure an audiences
emotional investment and prudently choosing a platform. However, for a
campaign to ultimately succeed, it must have substance. No amount of
mimicking a successful campaign can lend relevance to a socially irrelevant
issue. Because #SayHerName addresses the very real and immediate issues
of police brutality and racism, it has relatively good chances of remaining in
the public eye until these issues find a resolution.

Works Cited
Gross, Kali (KaliGrossPhD). About damn time: Judge orders FBI to review
documents in Sandra
Bland investigation. Fw.to/UMLS5of #SayHerName #SandraBland. 21
Feb 2016, 3:05 PM. Tweet.
Trujillo, Mary (Mary_Trujillo). .@WomenintheWorld Her name was Joyce
Curnell. The
headline just calls her woman. #SayHerName #BlackLivesMatter.
25 Feb 2016, 11:30 PM. Tweet.