Towards a Sociological Understanding of Social Media: Theorizing Twitter

Abstract

This article presents the first steps towards a sociological understanding of emergent social media. This article uses Twitter, the most popular social media website, as its focus. Recently, the social media site has been prominently associated with social movements in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria. Rather than rush to breathlessly describe its novel role in shaping contemporary social movements, this article takes a step back and considers Twitter in historical and broad sociological terms. This article is not intended to provide empirical evidence or a fully formed theoretical understanding of Twitter, but rather to provide a selected literature review and a set of directions for sociologists. The article makes connections specifically to Erving Goffman's interactionist work, not only to make the claim that some existing sociological theory can be used to think critically about Twitter, but also to provide some initial thoughts on how such theoretical innovations can be developed.

Anonymity, pseudonymity, and the agency of online identity: Examining the social practices of r/Gonewild

“…Poole's arguments share some commonality with many of the studies that have applied Goffman's theories of the presentation of self to social media sites (see Marwick and boyd, 2011;Murthy, 2012;Livingstone, 2008;van Dijck, 2013;Vitak, 2012). These articles tend to analyse impression management online as a practice rather than the representation of a "true" static identity.…”

Empathy Rituals: Small Conversations about Emotional Distress on Twitter

“…Murthy (2012) has suggested that having a conversation on Twitter can be like sitting in a room not knowing who is going to appear through the door, or indeed who is listening behind it. This, he argues, is consistent with the main purpose of Twitter being to publish content rather than foster networks.…”

Tweeting #humanwaste: A practical theological tracing of #humanwaste as a trend on Twitter

“…The transmission of messages, or 'tweets', is conducted from an individual's Twitter account where the user has the option to create their own profile through the use of a Twitter address or a 'handle' and a biographical description with a photograph and some personal background information (Murthy 2012(Murthy :1059Qiu, Lin, Ramsay & Yang 2012:710). Naturally, all these variable factors provide the constituents for an exceptionally dynamic interaction leading to the following possibility:…”