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That certainly explains your thinking a bit better. Thanks.

If you're reading things that say "Three people tweeted about this therefore it's fact" then sure, you're reading something that's nonsense. Articles need more than that to demonstrate there's a groundswell of opinion around something. But Twitter is no different to any vox populi source in that regard - in the things I read I don't think tweets are added to articles to prove anything; they're there for color and emotional connection. Without referencing the real world in their work reporters would write very bland and inhuman articles that would be horrible to read for most of their audience.

I think I'd rather read a properly researched article with those tweets than one without them. If the article isn't properly researched then no amount of tweets is going to rescue it.

There is zero differwnce between this and the old fashioned practice of picking two or three random people on the street to ask an opinion of. Reporters have been giving "man on the street" opinions of news stories forever. The only difference is that with Twitter a reporter cam actually see a larher number of opinions easily, which are already public, without dragging a cameraman down the sidewalk.

1. People on sidewalk are people. "Tweeters" may or may not be people.

2. A person can have at most one spot on a sidewalk, but multiple Twitter accounts.

3. People can organize an outpouring of opinion I Twitter. "Let's all tweet this at the same time" you can't organize happening to be on a sidewalk when the journo comes looking.

4. There is a certain personality type that joins Twitter. This is not the case to the same extent for sidewalks.

5. Tweet speed among Twitter users is more different (less than one to hundreds per day) than time spent walking sidewalks.

6. People on sidewalks are ASKED their opinion. People on Twitter speak without being asked. The people who aren't talking about a subject will have less strong views.

7. People on the sidewalk are in the same country as the journalist.

The old version of this is "vox pops", where a TV company goes out and interviews random people in the street. Both are vulnerable to cherrypicking the people that say what you'd prefer them to say.

At least with picking randos off the street you had to both physically make an effort to be there and could also only sample a limited amount of random population on a given day. With social media you have the ability to actively target super-minority opinions without getting up from your desk, which I believe has caused detrimental effects

They can just as easily choose to broadcast only the person on the street who had the wildest opinion.

> When journalists want to create a fake narrative, what they do is say "people are saying this" and then show a few tweets to support them. Even though almost nobody really may be thinking in those term.

What do you think when you read an article in a newspaper saying "an anonymous source at the state department who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation"? News organizations know how to make something out of nothing in print as well as online - so you're better off focusing on the identity of the speaker than the medium

Anonymous sources are a different thing altogether.

They are generally giving out specific facts.

Yes, of course those things are generally about manipulations of some kind, but there are protocols involved, and those 'anon facts' generally have to be true. In these situations, the news organizations credibility is on the line. The more credible the entity, the more likely they've done their checking/double checking to corroborate etc..

Many legit stories break this way.

Again, yes, it's all about narrative ... but there's generally more meat to the narrative in those cases.

Tweets by individuals who are authoritative on something are also a different thing. If an actress says 'I faced harassment from several studio execs' - then this has some credibility as a statement.

But this is altogether different from the straw-man 'people are saying' types of stories which are very common. A daily occurrence.

The 'materially useful' tweets are a small thing.

But that's the job of a journalist... to create controversies where there are none. To divide society to get you hooked on news.

> But that's the job of a journalist... to create controversies where there are none. To divide society to get you hooked on news.

Is it, though?

Does every journalist really "create controversies where there are none?"

Is every news story really an attempt to "divide society to get you hooked on news?"

Do you also believe meteorologists gin up their weather forecasts with storms for better ratings?

Don't confuse cynicism with intellectual rigor, please. The world - even media and social media - are more nuanced than that.

>Does every journalist really "create controversies where there are none?"

Yes.

>Is every news story really an attempt to "divide society to get you hooked on news?"

Maybe not every, but yes. Not only to get you hooked on news, also to advance certain political ideas which depend on the journalist/medium.

>Do you also believe meteorologists gin up their weather forecasts with storms for better ratings?

I do. I'm not saying they make up storms, but they could very well make things look more grave than they are so people listen to them.

Regarding meteorologists “ginning it up”: maybe not to the degree of making storms up, but here’s a recent, widely covered example of sensational reporting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/09/...

Sure, but that doesn't prove that the purpose of weather reporting is to alter forecasts for dramatic effect, just as the existence of sensationalist reporting doesn't justify the claim that the purpose of journalism is to divide society, advance political agendas and get people hooked on news. The effect of a process is not necessarily its purpose, nor the purpose of those involved in that process.

It's like saying all bankers are greedy, all politicians are corrupt, all doctors are stooges for big pharma, all police are psychopaths, etc. Maximal cynicism and minimal insight... it gets tedious after a while.

I agree that to generalize to all is pointless. Furthermore, it’s likely that in many cases the implicit goal of reporting is to rally public support, or to mollify public concerns over some government activity—-the division only seems productive for selling more papers/ad displays on some situations, or to agitate the public in others. Chomsky’s “Manufacturjng Consent” examines the propagandistic element of reporting in a US context.