[redslazer]

Yes because it is an easy way to craft what ever narrative is desired. There are people with ever possible view point on twitter so once you have the narrative you can find the appropriate tweet to embed.

"There was large scale outrage on twitter about decision X..." followed by an embed of one of three tweets.

It would be very interesting to chart the rise of twitter citations as compared to other sources.

[AmericanChopper]

News outlets have been doing this since long before Twitter was a thing. Any time you hear/read “x is facing criticism...”, “x is under pressure...”, “x is being praised...”, “many people are saying...”, “people familiar with the issue...”, “inside/anonymous sources...”, “x calls for...”, “experts say/warn...”, everything you hear/read after that point is 100% curated editorial opinion, and news outlets have been pedalling that for at least as long as I’ve been old enough to read the news.

Those kinds of statements are so vague that they’re pretty much always guaranteed to be true, so you don’t even need to provide a factual basis for them, but before Twitter news outlets would just go and interview random uninformed passers by on the street and gather a couple of good common-man sound bites to reinforce whatever bad opinion it is they’re pushing. My favourite technique that I’ve seen become more common over the past few years is to print an article claiming “x is facing online death threats” for anybody they want to generate some sympathetic support for. Are such headlines true? Almost certainly. Would that headline be true for any public figure you can possibly think of? Almost certainly.

[PaulKeeble]

Even nobodies on the internet have received death threats, haven’t we all had at least one at this point? I don't even remember how many I have had now. Given I have been using the internet since the late 1990s its got to average at least 1 a year but some years like the Usenet years I received a lot more than that average. Its probably less than 100 but I have no idea how many it actually is. I received many of these post about Java (the programming language) and not objectionable things, I received one for a post showing a no op stream!

[HeadsUpHigh]

I've gotten death threats on Reddit from people that I have never even argued with. The guy was deeply mentally ill with some kind of superiority complex so it came as no surprise. Anyway it made me think of how much identifying information I might have left behind and if someone patient enough to go through my entire comment history could doxx me. I've been using new accounts every couple months ever since while trying to change the subs I comment on every now and then.

[smabie]

Hell, some guy I cut off while driving told me to go kill myself today! It's unfortunate that comments that most everyone would disregard as meaning very much take on some weight online. It's pure cancer and is destroying the world.

It's trivially easy to affect real change on Twitter through bots, so it should come as no surprise that that's exactly what's happening.

Twitter isn't disgusting because of what people say on it, it's disgusting because of how it makes people feel.

[mc32]

One of the darker sides of Twitter is that it's basically a mean adult version of 'Yo Mamma' jokes. Put downs, one upping and bringing to light unsavory things that should remain unsaid. It has some flipside as a substitute to RSS feeds, but I'd rather go back to RSS.

[gorgoiler]

A friend of a friend once took us along to a Yelp Elite meetup / party. It’s what I imagined a Twitter party might be like, along the lines you described, if Twitter had a way of collecting cliques together IRL and letting them socialize.

[chasd00]

I use to go-to IRC parties in the 90s. I remember my first one being a really odd mix of people. from button down conservative suit types to people literally having sex in the living room in front of everyone. the common denominator was a random IRC channel. it opened my eyes to the people behind the scrolling text.

[smsm42]

You can. Use Feedly or any of the analogues. Much more sites support it than you think. You don't need twitter... well, for basically anything.

[FillardMillmore]

I've noticed the Twitter embeds becoming more common in mainstream news sources in the last few years. I think I subconsciously attributed it to the fact that the US President uses Twitter as a major tool of communication, and many journalists followed suit (this attribution of causality could be entirely wrong as I'm not a Twitter user myself, just an occasional visitor to the site).

Despite this, if the embedded tweets do not contain primary evidence or quality secondary evidence, it would become more difficult for it to gain real traction in other news outlets, no?

[cyphar]

> Despite this, if the embedded tweets do not contain primary evidence or quality secondary evidence, it would become more difficult for it to gain real traction in other news outlets, no?

I'd suggest you read Manufacturing Consent.

[FillardMillmore]

Okay, I'm familiar with Chomsky, point taken, thanks!

[parineum]

> I think I subconsciously attributed it to the fact that the US President uses Twitter as a major tool of communication, and many journalists followed suit

I think you've got that backwards. Journalists quoting tweets to construct the desired narrative gave legitimacy to twitter.

Trump rode on those coat-tails. His birther campaign should have never gained mainstream traction but the media couldn't help themselves from reporting on a conspiracy theory because Trump is a salacious figure.

They Streisand effected his entire campaign and presidency.