Nicholas Grossman argues that political Twitter matters a lot.
There’s always been a national conversation, just as influential people will always spend a significant amount of time participating in and absorbing it. But thanks to Twitter, it’s faster, more interactive, more present. It’s easier to put down a newspaper, walk away from the television, or put off in-person conversations than it is to fully disconnect from your smartphone. Traditional information gatekeepers used to have much more control; now, access to information has been democratized.
But these are bugs, not features. “Faster, more interactive, more present” means that people react with emotion, not reason. People behave better when they do disconnect. And the democratized access is mostly to slurs and distortions.
Twitter excites its users. But if you step back and watch, it enfeebles them. I generally find about 20 percent of the links on Tyler Cowen’s blog to be interesting. But that percentage drops to near zero when the link goes to a Twitter thread. I think he (and everyone else) would benefit from quitting Twitter.
Even though I use Facebook, I’ve never used Twitter or any other platform. On top of that nobody I know uses Twitter (even though all use Facebook). Whose using this? Is it really that widespread?
Lots and lots of DC, NYC insiders, plus academics.
Tho since I got banned after my first retweet (from Trump), without even a tweet, I now mostly just follow The Donald to see what he really says.
I just like blogs a lot more.
I understand the attraction of immediate feedback.
Getting fast feedback is more likely with more extreme statements; that’s one of the ways Twitter encourages extremism. Which is mostly bad.
Don’t see much of that here. One of the reasons I like it.
You got banned for retweeting a tweet from the President of the United States???
Well, my simple belief is if Trump wanted to win reelection he should lose his phone charger and let his aides send excessively mundane tweets that congratulate Gold Medal winners and celebrate our various holidays.
That might help him gain some of the respectable vote but it would also probably lose him some of the pissed off vote.
It’s kind of like saying that FDR would have done better in 1936 if he hadn’t inveighed against “economic royalists” and had limited his speeches to unemotional topics.
If one believes, as I do, that the more debate the better, the more free speech the better, than it follows that the more means available for entering the conversation the better. Like armament, the greater the variety to fit each possible military situation the better. There’s a place for nuclear artillery and there are times when the perfect weapon is a cherry bomb. In each case, all forms have their features, all have their bugs, and it is probably best left to the spontaneous order to accommodate them for optimal human interaction despite the omnipresent “noise” and discomfort, much designed not to edify and illumine but to confuse and obscure. Rationally, as we should always seek placid waters and clear sailing, we must remain diligent and respecting of the primal tides and variable waves. Jefferson’s wise phrase comes to mind, “the boisterous seas of liberty,” along with Hugo’s reassuring “a storm knows what it is doing.”
Re: “Twitter excites its users. But if you step back and watch, it enfeebles them. I generally find about 20 percent of the links on Tyler Cowen’s blog to be interesting. But that percentage drops to near zero when the link goes to a Twitter thread.”
I dunno. An important current counter-example is Phil Magness’ Twitter thread, setting the record straight about Piketty/Saez/Zucman on tax incidence.
True, Tyler Cowen’s blog links to Magness’ article at the AIER website (rather than to Magness’ Twitter account). But Magness first made his points in real time on Twitter—and I and many people got to his AIER article by following Twitter links.
One anecdote does not a case make. But I find Twitter helpful for some quality real-time clarifications in economics and public policy, even though I don’t tweet.
Interesting. I have a different AIER/twitter story. Some left-libertarians were pretty upset that the foundation was giving a video platform to somebody who, on twitter and in the recent past, advocated “anarcho-fascism” and various libertarian-fascist alliances. Via the thread, I found out that Aier employs some other people with pretty questionable pasts, including one who might even have had a hand in writing Ron Paul’s racist newsletters from the 1990s.
Magness does good work, but if he’s going to continue to get into the kind of cat fights he gets into with the left, he might want to think about finding a new home!
God, Arnold is right. Twitter has been horrible for me…
A good home is hard to find!
I agree with your comment regarding Tyler Cowen. I find Marginal Revolution to be a fabulous blog, probably my favorite. I imagine the “consumer surplus” provided by his blog, and his other activities, to be extremely high, and that is about the highest compliment I can pay to any economist, or any individual for that matter. But when I click on one of his Assorted Links and discover that it is a Twitter post, I immediately move on. I’ve thought of suggesting to Tyler that he somehow indicate which of his Assorted Links is for a Twitter post, but that would be rude to do to such a generous blogger. As he likes to say in his introductory remarks for Talks with Tyler, “This is the conversation I want to have with [fill in the blank]. Similarly, I assume he has structured his Assorted Links in the way he has for a reason. So I’m thrilled with whatever technique he prefers for his Assorted Links.
He did respond to requests he put (NYT) in links so we wouldnt blow one of our monthly freebies by accident. So you dont know until you ask.
Good point. Perhaps I should get off my duff and ask.
I am quite sure there were similar complaints about the immediacy of paper, ink, and presses after Gutenberg.
Sure, most of Twitter is a sewer. This is true of all media at all times in history.
“Faster, more interactive, more present” means that people react with emotion, not reason. People behave better when they do disconnect.
This makes Twitter useful. If you want to understand what people really think, you should observe them when they’re relatively less filtered.
Interesting! So there is a trade-off between Twitter’s (a) informativeness as a mechanism for revelation of inner beliefs and preferences and (b) erosion of civility about public policies.
John Alcorn:
I suspect you may have missed chedolf’s point.
There is no “trade-off”, as you put it – because there never has been any great degree of “civility about public policies” to erode.
I see your point.
Disagree. You make a good point about unfiltered comments; the problem is some twitter threads run to dozens — hundrds! — of comments, and some of them set off other comment streams … so really getting a handle on what the twitter “community” thinks may be a time consuming task.
Maybe worthwhile, though, to get a feel for what sort of sentiments are out there in the populace, rather than trying for a precise poll of opinions.
Mike,
I would go a step further than Chedolf does here- it is useful to learn how irrational a lot of elites truly are, and Twitter demonstrates this to us every single day. I find it a good guage to determine who is ever worth listening to in less immediate media.
It doesn’t just expose their irrationality though, it also makes them more irrational, and disproportionately empowers the irrational.
I think we’d be better off starting with the assumption that Twitter neither exposes nor encourages irrationality.
Rather, let’s imagine that people are basically rational (insofar as they ever are) and their behavior on Twitter is rational. What conditions make this sort of behavior rational?
1. The audience really isn’t the person you’re talking to. It’s all the people of your own tribe, your followers.
2. The content is limited to a trivial number of words, so one quite literally can’t say something reasoned and meaningful. With all the talk of « Orwellian » political discourse lately, I think Twitter is probably most accurate target of that label. Even though no single word is eliminated, of course, there is a similar effect by requiring that thoughts be conveyed in nothing more complex than a sentence or two.
This leads me to the conclusion that Twitter is no tool at all for conveying or discussing information. At least not information in the academic sense. Those are, at best, incidental features.
Rather, it’s a tool of social organization and jockeying for position within that hierarchy through speech that isnt much more complex than a price. That is, it conveys Hayekian sorts of information, but whereas Hayek’s « knowledge of particulars » were real world information that either sustained or destroyed pricing structures, Twitter comments operate for a political market with relatively tenuous attachment to anything that goes on in the real world.
Still, that doesn’t make it irrational. It’s rational that people act like jackasses on Twitter because it actually can gain them support, notoriety, position, and, ultimately, some sort of payout Therof.
If you want to understand what people really think, you should observe them when they’re relatively less filtered.
I really disagree with this. Everyone has uncharitable thoughts and reactions on occasion. I’ve heard psychologists theorize that we can’t even really control that. But if you want to know what someone thinks, observe what they do with those impulsive reactions.
Word. Left Twitter and Facebook years ago. Have been reading an additional book per week since.
I never got into Twitter until a couple months ago. I probably use it too much now. But my recent thought was that Twitter is like being inside a massive Austen-esque novel of manners as it unfolds. You just have to find the Elizabeths and Darcy’s and ignore the Wickhams.
Twitter is gonzo politics. It’s straight status-seeking.
Freud’s out of business because there’s nothing being sublimated. There’s nothing to uncover because it’s all on display. Schopenhauer said that underneath everything else was will. But with Twitter it’s just naked will. It’s Darwin without any elaborate camouflage or obfuscation or self-deceit. It’s just the raw, underlying reality brought to the surface, unadorned and unfiltered.
Journalists on Twitter simply tell us flat out they want this ally lifted up and this enemy cut down. Paul Krugman was doing this without Twitter. But we are all Paul Krugman now.
It’s not necessary, these days, to engage with your target on the level of ideas or policy or anything substantive. That’s because taking ideas seriously is a form of respect. To engage at that level would elevate the person you’re attempting to destroy. (“That is why sneering, intellectual dishonesty, lies, insults, ad hominem, etc. are the ruling modes of communication on social media. They are status-lowering, and status-lowering strategies work pretty well in a status game.” Kevin Williamson.)
Lowering some person’s status used to involve a lot more verbiage about policy and how you could run a regression analysis to demonstrate that some policy’s consequences are worse than some alternative policy. But we cut to the chase now. There’s no preliminary.
Social Media is a critical part of modern day politics in the U.S. It prevents us from inadvertently humanizing the people we’re told to hate for their politics.
It is important to understand the root word, twit, from which Twitter gets its name. “Twitter” the noun, is one who twits. Twitter, the app, live up to its root.
To vex by bringing to notice, or reminding of, a fault,
defect, misfortune, or the like; to revile; to reproach; to
upbraid; to taunt; as, he twitted his friend of falsehood.
This these scoffers twitted the Christians with.
–Tillotson.
[1913 Webster]
v 1: harass with persistent criticism or carping;
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
As for the “influential people”, the chattering class, they of the “intellectuals” historically are the ones to provide the opinions in support of the State. Social media has sped up the pace to the point many falter and reveal their real selves to posterity. In the past, the hypocrisy, venal nature and outright lies were only exposed to a small circle. Today, it is writ large.