Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Twitter has served as a leading public platform for sharing, receiving, and engaging with virus-related content. To protect users from misinformation, Twitter has enforced stricter content-vetting policies. This article positions Twitter as a politically motivated entity and briefly traces Twitter’s use and applications of the term “harmful content.” The author investigates how the platform’s broadening of its definition of harmful content illustrates Twitter’s strategy for combating misinformation by acting on kairotic moments in a way that is shaped by the diverse authoritative voices already guiding larger public COVID-19 discussions. The article concludes by examining the roles these observations can play in technical and professional communication classrooms.

Web 2.0's progressive use of personalizing algorithms has dangerously situated users into fi lter bubbles, or digital habitus. This insulated nature leaves users with an inability to engage civilly with others during online dialogues. This work examines how users on the sites Facebook and Countable frame and address online audiences, paying attention to the correlation between civility and action beyond the online dialogue. Through careful analyses on the respective comment threads, this work fi nds that the coupling of fewer personalizing algorithms and the inclusion of an established action beyond the dialogue can better ensure civility online.Użytkownicy Web 2.0 wskutek działania algorytmów i personalizacji znaleźli się w internetowych bańkach czy cyfrowych habitusach. To odizolowanie sprawia, że nie są w stanie angażować się w dialog z innymi osobami. Niniejsze studium przedstawia wyniki analizy, w jaki sposób uczestnicy dyskusji na stronach Facebook i Countable ramują i wskazują odbiorców, zwracając uwagę na korelację między obywatelstwem i działaniami poza dyskusją online. Dzięki starannej analizie poszczególnych wątków komentarzy, Autor dowodzi, że połączenie mniej personalizujących algorytmów i uwzględnienia działań podejmowanych poza internetowymi dyskusjami może lepiej służyć wspieraniu postaw obywatelskich w sieci. LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international (CC BY 4.0). The content of the license is available at

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The evolution of digital tools and platforms has ushered in new possibilities for researchers, scholars, and practitioners of rhetoric and composition and adjacent fields like technical communication. These technologies change the ways we can gather, store, and use larger datasets, prompting new discussions on what big data methods look like in the field. The chapters housed in Amanda Licastro and Benjamin Miller's edited collection Composition and Big Data investigate the promises, concerns, and areas for further conversation regarding the applications of big data methods in composition-focused research.