Retweeting with commentary: The spread and reception of news through participatory practices on Twitter

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ETWEETING WITH COMMENTARY

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HE SPREAD AND RECEPTION OF NEWS THROUGH PARTICIPATORY

PRACTICES ON TWITTER

29th _{June 2018}

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ONTENTS

Abstract ... 3

Chapter 1: Introduction ... 4

Chapter 2: Literature review ... 7

i. Journalism dynamics ... 7

Key qualities of change ... 7

The methods behind the changes ... 12

ii. Participatory practices ... 15

What is participatory culture? ... 15

Centering the conversation ... 17

Political participation ... 18

iii. A platform studies view: the affordances of twitter ... 21

Twitter and journalism ... 21

Twitter actions ... 26 Chapter 3: Methodology ... 31 Choice of case ... 31 Studying twitter ... 31 DMI-TCAT method ... 33 First encounters... 36 Chapter 4: Findings ... 38 Primary categories ... 38 Secondary categories ... 39 Discussion ... 41

Quote tweets versus other engagements ... 41

Quote tweets by category ... 43

Positive and negative sharing ... 45

Implications ... 47

Chapter 5: Conclusion ... 50

Bibliography ... 52

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BSTRACT

The professional distribution of news is an age-old practice, and social media is vastly newer. Yet, the impact the latter has made on journalism is substantial. In the first part of this thesis I present the literary background of the changes that social media has brought to journalistic practice. The core aspects I identify of these changes are the increased speed with which information can travel on the internet, the plurality of voices contributing to news content, and the interactivity that can occur between journalists and their audiences thanks to the prevalence of news production and intake on social media. The latter two of these changes are helped by a growing culture for participatory practices on social media by news audiences. An increase in participation, I argue, has evolved with the journalist-audience relationship and become a cornerstone of the way that the public engages with news. The nature of these changes to relationships between news providers and receivers beg an inquiry into the particular aspects and possible effects of this new method of news engagement.

On Twitter, news outlets and audiences share a space, and so share communicative methods and practices. In particular, the practice of quote tweeting demonstrates a blend between user engagement with news and a new centralising of the audience’s reaction and political commentary on news content. In the latter half of this thesis, I show that this is the case through an empirical study on quote tweets in relation to a selection of news outlet tweets of news articles. Through this study I find that quote tweeting indeed demonstrates a more two-sided and conversational approach to news engagement than before the rise and common use of social media platforms such as Twitter.

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NTRODUCTION

Twitter is a place of many opinions. Spending time on the website can occasionally feel like sitting in a loud café, half-listening to those around you and half-shouting into the void. During major news events, the topic of conversation in the Twitter café seems to become uniform. When a fire broke out in Grenfell tower on 14th _{June 2017, I was scrolling through Twitter. Suddenly the tone changed, and a}

huge proportion of my timeline materialised around one event. When news outlets report on events they aim to report on factual happenings, and they do so on Twitter as well as in newspapers. When I found out about this fire, however, it was via someone I followed crying out that the fire was a concrete image of inequality in the UK, and via someone else criticising the policies of the government. Some shared the news by expressing their sadness, and some centred the story around the Muslims living in and around the tower. Getting news through a major news organisation usually means seeing the facts first and the opinions later. On Twitter, however, I only came to know the story through individual Twitter users’ own opinions and personal agendas.

Twitter is a microblogging website, so it is only understandable that much of the content is personal utterings of the users (Rogers 2013, 1). The combination of this with its merit as a news source (Gruber et al. 168; Hermida et al.; Rosenstiel et al.; Newman; Stassen; Vis; Wasike) means that many news events will be framed through the eyes of individual users. Particularly interesting to this phenomenon is the practice of quote tweeting, introduced as a native function fairly recently (Twitter 2015), where users may retweet a tweet but with the addition of their own comment, which appears above and more prominently than, but still along with, the quoted tweet. In my personal use of Twitter, quote tweets seem to me like a perfect example of the way that tweets can be viewed as part of a user’s own personal angle. The user can display a tweet as attached yet subsidiary to their own tweet, adding commentary, criticism or other engagement forms. This method of interaction is distinct from other methods, such as the retweet, reply, mention and favourite, and so the practices surrounding it and the ways it is employed warrant some study. Following this, and the use of Twitter for news, I gather there are interesting implications in the way that quote tweets are used to interact with news tweets. News organisations, and by extension their tweets, aim towards objectivity (Wien). Twitter users have no such aim, but they are often the voices through which people are directed to news tweets and events, and so carry the news along with the journalist to some extent. This observation led me to the following research question: What do quote tweet practices say about news engagement and audience-journalist relationships on Twitter?

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Social media is a relatively recent phenomenon when put next to the profession of journalism. The number of decades journalistic practice has had to develop dwarfs the few years social media has been around, but the impact of the latter has been huge. There are countless papers and studies about how the rise of social media has changed journalism forever. Therefore, to answer my research question, I first consult existing literature to understand the relationship between social media more generally and journalistic practice. To understand the relationship between the journalist and their audience as manifested on social media, it is helpful to first analyse the journalist’s relationship with social media, and then the audience’s relationship with news on these platforms. Since there has been much writing on these topics, I spend this part of my analysis in the theoretical background of the topic of social media’s intersection with journalism.

Existing theories studying journalism through social media are numerous, but I centre around two larger fields of discussion: the change to newsroom practices thanks to social media, and participatory practices by its users. From this I can attack both sides of the question of social media’s effect on journalist-audience relationships; the point of view of the journalist on this matter is shown in the former, and the point of view of the audience in the latter. The salient matter in both of these perspectives is what kinds of practices social media platforms provoke. Regarding the journalists’ side, they might provoke a change to newsroom practices, for example, in increased speed or interactivity with their audiences (Newman; Al-Rawi; Kramp and Loosen; Nielsen and Schrøder). For the audience, they might provoke participation (Bruns 2008; Boulianne; boyd 2010; Domingo et al.; Jenkins; Jenkins et al. 2015; Loader et al.; Loosen and Schmidt; Rotman et al.). From exploring these debates, I can better explore the relationship between the journalists and the audiences as they convene on social media.

Social media platforms have different uses and affordances, and so have varying influence on journalism practices. In the case of studying how news is spread and received online, Twitter is particularly interesting for three reasons: first, it is a place where information can be shared and viewed in real-time, which is valuable to the spread of breaking news (Vis). Second, as it is a microblogging platform the sharing of individual opinions is encouraged. Third, the connection from one user to another has no bearing on the existence of a real-life relationship between people, and therefore has the potential for any voice to be spread widely. Finally, the affordances of Twitter, such as the retweet and (as I will later argue) the quote tweet, carry specific connotations with users based on the ways they are used. This means that when news organisations and journalists also use them, these connotations are both taken up as and contribute to journalistic practice. In my study of Twitter, I use DMI-TCAT (Borra and Rieder) and content analysis of individual tweets to understand the nature of quoting practices employed around news tweets.

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Following an evaluation of existing literature about changing newsroom dynamics, participatory audience practices and news spread and reception specifically on Twitter, I show that through my research questions I can shed some new light on these debates. Quote tweeting gives an insight into the melding of the journalist voice and the unprofessional voice on Twitter that has not been previously studied in this way. Using a selection of tweets from news accounts on Twitter sharing news events, I analyse the subsequent tweets that quote these and explore how this opens up the conversation about news spread on Twitter in light of my discussion of previous literature. The effect of social media on news and its reception is something that has been written about for as long as it has been around, but my analysis is important in a further way than just contributing to a dense debate. By shining a spotlight on one particular Twitter function, I am able to show the audience’s changing relationship with journalists in a new way. A higher level of engagement and a critical eye is at the centre of this change, and the ways in which people use quote tweets on the news they come across encapsulates this. Through my theoretical study I show the importance of questions about changing journalist and audience relationships and practices; through my case study I get closer to a question that has been previously missing. Participatory practices from audiences within news are phenomena that have evolved with social media. Therefore, to keep up with this fast-paced change in the important context of current events, a closer look at the participatory mechanisms is necessary.

In Chapter II of this thesis I explore the literature surrounding this topic, first by examining arguments on the changing dynamics of the newsroom and of the journalist’s role in society. I establish the blurring line between the journalist and the audience on social media as a crux of the change. Second, I look at the perspective of the audience, especially in the regard of the participatory practices that social media encourages. Third, I explore the role of Twitter specifically on both sides of this relationship, both in its purposes of use and specific function structures. To narrow down the scope of these research factions, I then focus specifically on the quote tweet. Given my hypothesis that this function sheds some light on the changing nature of audience engagement with news, I explore this function in detail using a case study. In Chapter III I outline the method for the empirical study that, as I explain, aims to close the gaps identified in the previous chapter. In Chapter IV I present my results and discuss their merits and implications. I find a number of attitudes and intentions behind engagement with news using this feature. Most interestingly, the use of the quote tweet to interact with and share news content on Twitter seems to be a development in the critical and mutually beneficial relationship between journalists and their audience on social media: news production is less one-sided with more audience criticism, and thus according to previous literature, can be seen as changing in a positive rather than negative way.

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ITERATURE REVIEW

i. JOURNALISM DYNAMICS

The field of journalism has undergone many changes with the rise of social media and the interconnection of people across the world. Previously, people would get their news from a newspaper, a highly curated object from one organisation in a once-a-day package. With the prevalence of internet use now, news is received in multiple forms and voices, and there is more possibility for interaction than the passivity of reading a newspaper privately in one’s home. In this section, I explore the differences between these two forms of news production and spread from the point of view of the journalists. The question I therefore aim to answer here is: How are newsroom dynamics evolving vis-à-vis social media?

There are three key elements to this evolution that I identify: increased speed of information travel, a greater number of participating or useful voices in the audience of news content, and a capacity for greater interaction between journalists and their audiences. An analysis of literature on this topic allows me to present the changes to newsroom dynamics as a crucial factor in the changing relationships of audiences and journalists to news as it exists on Twitter.

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Speed

The first crucial change that internet and social media use have brought to journalistic practice is the increased speed with which information can be collected and shared. Newman (2009) cites Nik Gowing to say that the news cycle has been changed from a number of hours to a number of minutes (Newman 34). The use of Twitter in crises characterises this point. Gruber et al. (2015) cite the relieving and reinstating of University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan as an example for Twitter’s value as a way of posting and reading up-to-date information as newsworthy events happen (164-8). The 2011 summer riots in London are also a historical example of social media being invaluable to understanding events as they unfold (Vis 27). With social media providing a mechanism for minute-to-minute updates on one’s surroundings, and used by a large number of people in the general public, it follows that more people can record and share events in public more quickly and easily than before (Sharma). It is likely to take longer for the press to attend and report on an event than it is for those already in the area to

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share what they see. Newman argues that this is an example of the changing nature of ‘breaking news’ and ‘news cycles’ as a whole (2). Journalist Jeff Jarvis (PBS Digital Studios) recommends we ‘break out of the idea that news is a once-a-day product’ (0:28). This points to a move away from the traditional system of publishing news only when papers come out or shows broadcast; according to Jarvis, news is a constant and time-sensitive phenomenon and social media allows a reflection of that.

The increased speed of the news cycle that social media brings comes not just out of a greater number of participants on the scene, but also from the fast evolution of the use of social media. This is something I will show later with the changing affordances of Twitter, but is signposted by Newman in his predictions of the importance of social media to news in the future (3, 15, 31). Kramp and Loosen (2018) point to the increasing ‘pace of innovation of media technologies’ (209) as a core change of media environment that informs the development of journalism. Briefly, this indicates the constant changes to social media platforms and the different ways they come to be used over time. As these change quickly, so do journalistic practices that involve the platforms.

There is also an argument that the rapidity of news distribution from minute-to-minute social media action has had impact on a core tenet of journalistic aim: search for truth. Galloni (2018) argues that because of this speed, it is now it is much harder to be the first voice to a story. What is more important, therefore, is being the voice who is right. She gave an example of a story that snowballed because of the desire for it to be true in multiple news organisations, but after the initial reports, fact-checking led Reuters to confirm that it wasn’t true. The story came after all the others, but it was the story with factual proof, so prevailed. The pull to truth is now more important in some ways than speed.

Plurality of voices

A further level that social media gives to journalistic practice comes from a plurality of users-turned-participants (boyd 2010; Domingo et al.; Jenkins et al. 2015; Kramp and Loosen). With the users contributing to the news cycle in greater numbers, there results a diversity of opinion and an ‘extra layer of information’ (Newman 2). Newman gives examples in Twitter used for live event coverage, for example, in the Iranian street protests of June 2009 (24). Since then there have been countless other examples of Twitter being used for live reporting from those in the vicinity of a crisis or major event. Having a multiplicity of people commenting on events as they happen can lead to a more accurate picture of reality for those who are not there. Janine Gibson, a Guardian online editor, described it as a ‘tiny nip of information juxtaposed against somebody else’s tiny nip of information, which helps you build a picture’ (Newman 31).

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However, others have criticised this aspect of social media use in journalistic practice. Andrew Keen praised Twitter’s capacity to distribute opinion in real time, but said it cannot replace curated coverage by a trained professional (Newman 30). With the example of the 2009 Iranian protests, Newman poses the dilemma of false information and noise placed around an issue. Newman adds that errors can be amplified on social media, and this can be supported by the spread of fake news on Facebook and Twitter (Vosoughi et al.). Clay Shirky offers in contrast that mistakes get corrected quickly, and these corrections tend to get amplified (2009). A second level of criticism against a greater number of voices spreading news is the risk that those voices are unbalanced (Newman 27). In the example of the Iranian protests, Newman said that the conversation on social media around the elections were in favour of the younger candidate with a greater youth following due to the skewed demographics of young people using social media versus older generations (27). However, these statistics have changed over time. The gap between younger and older people who use social media has closed over the last decade (Pew Research Center), so it is less the case that the majority of voices on social media will be young people.

A further difference in contemporary journalism practice is the blurring of the line between professional and amateur. Social media allows (though does not promise) broad visibility across this line, with a possibility to be seen even without a larger audience or verified status. Journalist Jeff Jarvis (PBS Digital Studios) says that ‘acts of journalism can be performed by anyone’ thanks to the use of social media, particularly Twitter (4:55). Journalist Tim Pool (NowThis) similarly stated that anyone can become the most important journalist in the world thanks to social media and smartphones, simply from being in the right place at the right time when something newsworthy happens (0:58). Social media’s place in the changing conceptions of journalistic practice is consistent, and one clear result is the coming together of a multitude of voices, who all have the potential to perform world-changing acts of journalism (Jeff Jarvis, PBS Digital Studios). As Tim Pool (NowThis) says, the fact that almost anyone can easily film an event as it happens is crucial to this change, but I would also add that the prevalence of tools such as Twitter where such videos can be shared and popularised in real time further allows journalism to be easily performed by non-professionals.

One contention that comes from the rise of citizen journalism or the blurred boundaries between citizen and journalist is the notion of trust. Tim Pool (NowThis) says that one of the most difficult problems of modern media dynamics is the question of who to trust (1:25). He says that because anyone can be a ‘citizen journalist’, it is difficult to know who is trustworthy and unbiased. This is different from the past dynamic of broadcast media, since those spreading the news are trained professionals. Now, however, the plurality of voices in news content means this is a standard that is

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harder to uphold. He argues that one possible way of uncovering a source as trustworthy is through the Twitter ‘verified’ status in the form of a blue check mark. This is a confirmation from Twitter that the user is verified as who they say they are, and usually a public figure of some kind. This might be a quick litmus test for a Twitter user to believe information, and without it, they are less likely to trust what is written is true (NowThis 1:40). However, given that the check mark is largely handed out to accounts ‘of public interest’ (Twitter Help Centre, a.), the idea that anyone can be a journalist is therefore still in contention with this. But this is where the new role of journalists come into play; though anyone can perform ‘acts of journalism’ (PBS Digital Studios), it is the journalist’s job to collate these acts and share them as viable information.

Two-way interaction

The third point I identify as one of the most important changes made to journalistic practice from use of social media is the introduction of a two-way structure of practice (Newman 2, 4). This is to say that the broadcast model of journalism, where the journalist speaks ‘one to many’ to an audience, has been shifted to a ‘many to many’ practice in which the audience is more integrated in the production of news (Shirky 2009). In other words, where the news before was a speech, it is now closer to a conversation. News broadcast on television, radio or in newspapers is spoken to an audience, and is difficult to respond to in a meaningful way. News broadcast online, however, has a greater capacity to hold comments and responses. This is true of news websites, where most articles will have comment sections underneath for people to contribute. However, news is shared and viewed via social media sites more and more in recent years (Pew Research Center). Therefore, it is evident that the capacities of the social media sites to incite conversation and display opinions comes even more easily with the way news is received online.

The higher level of engagement from the audience with the news that comes from social media use implies that the way that news organisations promote themselves is different than it has been with broadcast media. Now, Newman (2) finds, organisations aim to encourage participation as a way of increasing their spread. He outlines the ways that some individual organisations have done this. There are two distinct motivations behind the encouragement of participation: first, to gather user-generated content. He identifies the BBC as having this aim to gain a wider understanding of news and engage with their audience (11). Secondly, other organisations preferred to create spaces for opinion and debate. For example, the New York Times created their own social networks within their site (16), and the Guardian and Telegraph ran message boards to hold discussion (11). Though these were arguably

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products of an earlier time before the ubiquity of social media we see now, they show that the organisation response to a many-to-many model of news has been in development for years.

The rise of news-related user-generated content has been important to the changing practice of journalism. Newman argues that because of this, journalists have a new role rather than just the seekers of newsworthy content: they are the curators of audience-produced material. This is a possible response to critics of the use of user-generated content, such as Andrew Keen who said that it undermines journalism with its ‘amateur’ lack of quality and professionalism (Newman 5). Given an influx of content from amateurs with a certain amount of it inaccurate or exaggerated, the journalist must take on the new role of curating this content and building what is closest to the truth out of the information given. Journalists already had the role of analysing and synthesising information (Mark Luckie, PBS Digital Studios 2:05), but the quantity of user information on social media and the blurred professional-private line have resulted in more responsibility towards sifting through this content (Kramp and Loosen 213).

Paired with this new journalistic role, there follows a new role of the audience too. William Dutton (2007) posits that the general public, or the audience to the news, is now the ‘fifth estate’. This references the 18th century identification of the press as the fourth estate, meaning the entity which watches over the governmental estates (2). Dutton argues that ‘networked individuals’ now comprise the guardian of the fourth (and other) estates, or the fifth estate (3). This comes about from the audience’s newfound integration with the news process, and the ability for the general public to hold the press and the government accountable (17). Newman puts this as a reversal of George Orwell’s Big Brother society, saying it is now ‘us watching them’ (33). The journalist is thus diversified into a curator role, but the audience too gains the extra role of maintaining the journalists. This symbiotic relationship comes from the increasing ease with which the audience and the journalists may communicate with one another.

It is important to remember that a core reason behind the use of comment sections on news articles is feedback, both positive and negative, and this feedback now occurs outside comment sections as well. Kramp and Loosen emphasise an ‘omnipresence of audience feedback’ (206, 209, 213) as one of the bigger trends in the changing media environment for journalism. They argue that this phenomenon shows the importance of journalists taking seriously their new role of curating a plethora of content (214). The deliberation that must be done by journalists is visible in the comment sections themselves, which famously contain a wide range of voices, some more helpful and some more unpleasant. Kramp and Loosen argue that this shows a notable change in audience participation in itself, given that it is much easier to give feedback via this method than it was in the days of ‘letters to

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the editor’ (206). They further argue that the nature of the section shows the role of mediation in the relationship between journalist and audience, and cite Collins and Nerlich (2015) as seeing a ‘deliberative democratic potential’ in comment sections. The reduction in distance between the news provider and the audience is clear from this practice, and shows that a more community-minded future is at hand (Kramp and Loosen 207).

The importance of the ways that social media has changed the media environment is what Kramp and Loosen identify as a move into symmetry between the journalists and the audience. They identify the broadcast or ‘supply and demand’ model as ‘asymmetrical’ between the audience and the journalists (211), and state that the trend is towards a symmetry between the two in the sense that it is becoming more reciprocal and participatory. This would intuitively mean a change in aims and expectations of the two sides in what they should be doing for journalism and news. But, according to a survey detailed by Kramp and Loosen, there is a mismatch in the mutual expectations of the audience and the journalists (221). They call this an ‘inclusion distance’, meaning the distance between the expectations of inclusion between the two parties. Journalists seem to assume more interest in participation from the audiences than the users themselves specify (229). Users, on the other hand, expect more for journalists to behave as watchdogs for politicians and other governmental agents. The mismatch in expectation here shows a problem in the contemporary move towards symmetry of audience and newsroom.

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The move from the ‘one to many’ model of journalism to the ‘many to many’ model is visibly important in the development of newsroom practice. Following these developments, it is necessary to understand the qualities of social media that entail these changes. Kramp and Loosen detail the shift in the relationship between the journalist and the audience in this way. For one thing, potential audiences to news organisations spend their time and do their communicating over social media. So, they argue, news organisations have followed them to social media as a way of spreading their messages. They follow from this that the behaviour is ‘radical’: the ‘millennial news media strive to engage them’ (218). This is not just a passive operation of watching and replying, but an active change in use by the journalists and news organisations where the behaviour of the young people on social media is mirrored, for example by using memes and using the platform in other such ways as others are using it (214). The purpose of this is, according to Kramp and Loosen, to involve the audience in the process of news-making, either through possible collaboration or for correction of stories. They argue that there

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are two strategies at play with these techniques of adaptation: first, to contribute to the social media conversation, and second, to build an audience for their brand (218). Their take-away from these strategies is that newsrooms are not simply being supplementary in their social media performance, but it is part of the core of newsroom behaviour (218). This means that use of social media is now integral to journalistic practice.

However, despite the increase in engagement with audiences on social media platforms, Kramp and Loosen also speak of a ‘fragmentation’ of audiences and point out that there is not one coherent group (215). Because of the variation in social media platforms, the audiences vary across them, and so do the ways in which journalists can reach them (Kramp and Loosen 211, 231). They particularly point out the ‘actor constellation’ as increasingly dynamic and less static (211). This goes hand in hand with the move from the broadcast or ‘supply and demand’ model, where one news organisation would have a coherent audience to a television or radio broadcast. However according to their research on the growing ‘dialogue and participation’ model, multiple platforms hold different audiences and given that the journalists engage with audiences over platforms, this would require multiple techniques to engage the differing audiences (218). This entails adopting various voices and styles to reach audiences across the internet spectrum, and so contributes to the necessity for a dialogic approach to news content (231). It may seem contradictory to speak of ‘networked’ audiences (206), but as Kramp and Loosen say, the actor constellation is dynamic, so though there may be connection between them, attention is divided across the audience range.

Effects

Newman calls the possibility of participation a ‘democratising force’, meaning that the mutual spreading of information and knowledge can maintain just dynamics of power and civil society (4). Stassen (2011) views upcoming practice of news spread via social media as a ‘richer’ news experience, given the increase in ability to interact and contribute from the user’s point of view (128). She collates a number of contemporary academics who agree that it is the possibility of participation in news content and sharing that means social media plays such a valuable and ‘democratising’ role for journalism (Momberg 2009 cited in Stassen 127).

However, the notion of the internet as a ‘democratising force’ is not universal. Morozov (2011) countered arguments about the use of social media for revolutionary anti-establishment purposes, saying that social media is not limited in its use to the general public, and powerful people and organisations could use it to their own ends. He argued that the use of social media towards democratic

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ends, i.e. political (or) activist arguments and actions, contributes to a behaviour of ‘slacktivism’ and devalues the idea of in-person activism (201). Further to this, there is the case of activist behaviour online being turned against the users by authoritarian regimes. Burns and Eltham (2009) outline the 2009 Iranian election’s dark turn when the authorities began to use Twitter to locate and sometimes kill protesters (306). The spreading of news on social media is therefore not necessarily an aid to democratic practice. This leads me into my next area of discussion of whether there is a pull to participation on social media, and what this does for speech and action around news events.

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ii. PARTICIPATORY PRACTICES

I have touched briefly on one big change to the practice of journalism that has come about through social media: the ease of participation from the audience. This has come about from the move of news distribution from print and broadcast to the internet via websites, whether belonging to the news organisation or not. The internet is decisively not a space for one-way activity; reading content may occur but there is still more often than not an opportunity to comment and engage, or share with others so that they might be more likely to engage with the material. This allows conversation over news content more broadly than is available when watching a broadcast or reading a newspaper, where comments made would only be available to people in the room, and could not be picked up by the news organisation itself. As a consequence, news organisations encourage participation on social media, and audiences play their part. From this I aim to answer in this section the question: Is the conversation the product rather than the news? With news being spread via social media, the object of participation is crucial to understanding the changing culture of news, and through examining the new role of the conversations incited by news, I can better understand this object.

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A common thread in the relationship between the journalist and the audience is the burgeoning symmetry of content creation and distribution. This plays into the relatively recent concept of ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins 2006, Jenkins et al. 2005). This denotes a culture that opposes the idea of consumer culture, where the common behaviour of the public is to consume without contribution. Participatory culture, on the other hand, is a culture where the public contribute and produce as well as consume. Henry Jenkins, a pioneer of study of the participatory dynamic, identifies developing social media environments as built on the idea of participation (Jenkins 2006, 1, 179). Content on social media is made up of content formed by users, and so participation is necessarily involved in its use. There is an aspect of consuming, but the users also themselves make up the content. Axel Bruns (2008) coined the term ‘produsage’ to describe this effect. The word refers to the move from production to usage, thus blurring the lines between a producer and a user. Vincent Miller (2011) takes this idea and elaborates to discuss ‘prosumers’, a portmanteau of ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’, and argues that this is the endpoint of a feedback-oriented model for products such as social websites (87). He finds that because of this shattering of boundaries, consumers have more power in the production of goods.

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When it comes to news content as a product, this would imply that in participatory culture, consumers have more influence in the way news is produced.

The relationship newsrooms have with audiences has changed with the rise of participatory practices that follow this culture, but is one that is still said to be important for journalists to uphold (Witschge et al. 2012). Loosen and Schmidt (2012) outline this changing relationship with relation to the shifting levels of symmetry between the two. They argue that there are three ways of viewing the audience from the point of view of the journalist: first, that the audience are recipients, and second, that they are the product (869-70). The first view regards the audience as purely passive in relation to the active journalists. Loosen and Schmidt posit it as a regard of the audience as ‘opposed or even subordinate to media oganizations’ (869). Along with the idea of participatory culture and the influence of the audience in news distribution that I have previously outlined, this is possibly an outdated idea. The second view posits the audience as more active in news production and distribution than the first; they are in a sense created by the newsrooms in order to populate the reciprocal news industry (870). They assert that both views acknowledge some importance of the audience’s role in newsrooms.

But according to their analysis, there is a third view of the relationship: that the audience are ‘empowered networks’, or ‘networked public spheres’ (871). On this view, the audience is not a mass of individuals observing media content or being used by the media companies as part of the industry, but they are collaborative in the media production process, and active rather than passive. They argue that this has come about from the nature of social media websites in their blurring of divide between ‘senders’ and ‘receivers’. Instead these categories are not distinct across people but broadly applied to any user at the same time (871). Performing acts on social media such as liking, commenting and sharing involves being both a sender and a receiver in that the encounters are conversational. This view expands beyond the ‘produser’ of Bruns (2008) as it envisions an audience that is not just a producer combined with a consumer, but a network of ‘mass-self communication’ (Castells 2009, 58-70). The audience is not only active rather than passive, but self-connecting as a group.

Loosen and Schmidt particularly identify the potential of contributions from users of social media. The affordances of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter are such that to use them is to participate and produce: writing a tweet or liking a status is using the platform, but it is also production of social content and/or participation. Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff (2011) argues that the users of Facebook are not the customers of the website, but the products. He argues this on the basis that the customers do not pay for the service but the advertisers do, so we are the commodity of the website (Solon). While this argument has implications elsewhere, it becomes clearer that the nature of the website is to encourage participation by making it apparent and available in its forms. While users

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of social media are not necessarily all contributors to news production and distribution, thanks to the nature of the websites and their use, they all have the potential to contribute to journalistic practice. On top of this, the nature of the platforms puts people of all career backgrounds and influence levels together in broadly the same place, allowing an arguably level playing field (Ahmad). The journalists and non-journalists alike are in the same space, and aside from questions of verification or attachment to recognised news organisations, both categories follow the same rules of social media games. In a vacuum, a professional and a private citizen have the same potential to spread something newsworthy on social media.

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Social media affords participatory action, and news organisations encourage engagement via these means. Communicative practices have become a priority of action for newsrooms (Kramp and Loosen). As a result, there are more conversations and replies around news. With the content being displayed on a social website, it is intuitive that the conversations come first and the news comes second. But with news becoming a centre of social media, and discoveries of people who get all their news content this way (Pew Research Center), the conversations have become a central part of news content too. Kramp and Loosen talk about a move from ‘supply and demand’ journalism to ‘dialogue and participation’ (222, 231). They say that the nature of news content production has fundamentally shifted along with this, as evident by new job titles such as ‘community manager’, ‘moderator’ and ‘curator’ (214). They emphasise the growing importance for journalists to stimulate communicative practices between journalists and audiences, ‘with a strong emphasis on user dialogue’ (214). Here we see the centralising role of the conversation in news content.

Stearns (2016) elaborates on the trend of conversational news apps and websites. He analyses the news app Quartz, which offers a service whereby news is received as part of a dialogic messenger app on a phone. He felt that the app had a ‘soul’, and explains that this may be because of the intimacy that comes from a two-way conversation. News is a conversational phenomenon in that it is always evolving and rarely has only one side or voice. Stearns argues that journalists should view the public as ‘“democratic strangers” instead of distant others’, and apps like this show that the development of understanding of the conversational merits of news when contextualised in its reality of being situated among a population of individuals.

According to Stearns, conversational news is more engaging and is growing in popularity. There is also research to show that involving conversation can increase the quality of news content. Stearns

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cites Arthur Miller (1961, cited in Stearns) as saying ‘a good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself’. News content is rich and complex, and it is understandable that a dialogic approach would be a method that better covers the nuances of events. Jahng and Littau (2016) also found that journalists were believed to be more credible by audiences when more interactive on social media. They suggest that journalists are mediators of information and because the journalist-audience relationship is not (any longer) one-way, the public regards journalists engaging with them visibly as positive: that is to say, interaction on social media reflects a journalist’s intentions to be dialogic and open in their work (52). This shows that the trend towards a dialogic approach for newsrooms does not just reflect a method for newsrooms to improve their trade from just their side, but a way that the public now regards the practice from the outside. Given the positive view of interaction and the importance of dialogue in journalisms, it follows that newspapers encourage conversation to occur, either in a format hosted by the news organisation such as comment sections below articles or opening forums (Newman), or engaging people on social media with the conventionally used methods (Kramp and Loosen).

A conversational approach to journalism can be seen as a reflection of the participatory culture of social media use, but it is also helpful to the trade in that the audience can get a richer and more personal feel to the news they view, and feel more connected to the journalist ‘curators’ (Newman) who moderate their news. On top of this, there is the case that a dialogic approach better reflects the nuances of news. Encouraging engagement and conversation around a story can show not only the story itself, but the relational complexities of the story and the many sides that can be taken around it. Parisi (1997) argues that given the journalistic aim towards impartiality in news reports (Wien), encouraging dialogue around a story can show the nuances without undermining the balanced voice of the journalist (682). Marchionni (2013) offers the concept of ‘journalism-as-a-conversation’ as a way for the process of spreading news to improve the ‘common good’ by way of interaction and inter-correcting between journalist and audience (136). She further argues that conversation is democratic (137; 2016 232) and so integrating conversation with news provides a less autocratic voice.

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I have thus far focused on the changes to newsroom practice following the rise of social media broadly, and more particularly participatory practices on social media. I will now turn to discussing the storied changes to the audience or user from these factors. I believe the most interesting thing for social media

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participation is the phenomenon of increased political participation as a result. This comes possibly as a result of participatory culture meaning lower bars for participation through ease and convention (Jenkins et al. 2005).

The concept of a networked audience (Loosen and Schmidt, boyd 2010a,b) has remained consistent in discussion of implications of social media. The idea denotes an audience that is self-connected and informed among themselves. One theorised implication is that a networked audience is more politically active than non-networked audiences of the past (Skoric et al., Boulianne, Jenkins et al. 2015, Knoll et al., Loader et al.) Related to this is the goal of journalists to inform the public: given this, a self-connected and self-informing public can be seen as a goal of journalists, updated to modern standards of connectivity. Further, viewing journalists as the fourth estate and the audience as the fifth within a contemporary democracy (Dutton 2007), we can assume that political participation and commentary following information and engagement from journalists is a necessary part of the behaviour of a networked audience.

The fact of user participation on social media and its link to political participation has not come about merely from the audience’s use of social media alone: the pull to audience engagement from newsrooms is also at play. I have detailed above the advantages for newsrooms in encouraging engagement, especially in the more networked era of social media. I have also discussed that a result of this is a more conversational approach to journalism. However, there is the further possibility of not only a centering in news of conversation, but of opinionated voices. News organisations like the Guardian host opportunities for readers to share their opinions such as in ‘Comment is Free’ (Domingo et al. 338, Newman 12). Marchionni (2014) argues that comment sections under articles are offered as a form of ‘democratic discourse’ (230). There is implication in this that the opinion of the amateur has a valued role in news content, whether as a way to connect the journalist and audience (Newman 7) or to gain attention to a news story (Marchionni 244). When a message comes with feedback, especially pointed feedback, response to the feedback would involve (to an extent) spreading the message. In a study on what comments on news articles do for the citizen-journalist relationship, Marchionni concludes that perceived ‘conversationalness’ of journalists results in perceived credibility (243). Whether this trust coming from engagement goes in two directions is not touched on in her paper, but it is telling that she finds engagement via online commenting begets (perceived) journalistic value. Marchionni also adds that native social media behaviour such as retweeting could be ‘the new commenting’ (244), so there follows the possibility that citizen participation even in the form of a simple social media comment or retweet can be viewed as collaborative to journalism.

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The question of whether social media has resulted in greater political participation is contested. Boulianne (2015) discovers a positive trend between social media use and political engagement, but admits the results may not be causal (534). Loosen and Schmidt argue that not everyone using social media actively contributes to the conversations held there (871). Loader et al. find that there is a positive correlation between social media use and political engagement across Australia, the United States and the UK (146). As I have mentioned, the affordances of social media provoking participation and engagement is beneficial to the practice of journalism online. Since politics is central to news, it therefore follows that much of this participation on social media is related to politics, and so social media users are engaged in political conversations and behaviour online. While evidence of a causal relationship between social media and political participation is questioned, the participatory nature of social media crossed with the journalistic use of platforms to spread (political) news means an overlap between online participation and political participation.

Whether the link between social media use and political participation is causal or not, another concern of scholars is the notion of performative politics, or inauthentic political action online. Kligler-Vilenchik and Thorson (2016) examine the arguments around this inauthentic action with relation to popular moments of collective activist thought on social media. They argue that the methods of political action in the networked era indicate ‘changing citizenship’ rather than a reduction in political participation, and this entails a move towards a different form of citizenship and thus action (1995). They suggest that the view of ‘changing citizenship’ should be a frame by which to understand the forms of political engagement (1995). However, they offer a counterexample in the view of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ citizenship, using the idea that online political participation is not effective, and so lower in value than traditional offline participation (2005). This perhaps comes from the small size and effect of political actions online such as sharing videos. On the other hand, they compare the memes ridiculing such small actions with other actions such as voting (2005). The difference comes down to a change in methods of social action, they argue, and online political action should not be taken as a replacement of traditional political action, but an object of ‘changing citizenship’ (2006).

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iii. A PLATFORM STUDIES VIEW: THE AFFORDANCES OF TWITTER

When it comes to the spread of, and participation within, news on social media, it is necessary to ask how the platforms themselves allow or encourage this kind of activity. I have separated the objects of this study into the categories of journalists and audiences; each category has different motivations in their particular uses of Twitter. For journalists, I refer to their use of the platform as an aid to their professional practice. For audiences, use of Twitter is in accordance with normal user behaviour: practices that are part of the founding and evolving purpose of the website in its design, and practices that are adopted by casual users through their individual uses. In this section, I explore both sides of use of Twitter and aim to show how its particular affordances and used behaviours contribute to the question of the changing relationship between journalists and audiences. Thus, I follow the question: How does Twitter shape conversation?

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Speed of communication

I have explored earlier the nature of social media to spread news quickly and allow a multitude of voices to enter the atmosphere. I will now elaborate on this with specific reference to Twitter. Vis (2013) cites the short 140 character updates on Twitter as ‘fragmented’ and so giving a snapshot of information, requiring the user to curate this information as it appears (29). She references Hermida as saying that Twitter is an amalgam of news information without an overruling order (Hermida 2012, 2, cited in Vis 29). This results in a necessity for journalists to adapt to the new methods of sharing and gathering information, and, as I have explained above, possibly themselves becoming that order. Beyond this broad implication for journalists, there is also the implication that Twitter lends itself to be very useful during crises because of its real-time updates (Vis 29). This is to say that the timeline (Twitter homepage) is focused on the tweets showing up in the present rather than on updates from days ago or longer, and events happening at that moment are the core focus (Manjoo). A study by Schultz et al. (2011) found that because communication on Twitter can be shared with one mouse click, information in crises can spread faster than by traditional blogs or other means (22, 24). This has not always argued

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to have been a positive, however: they reference an (uncited) argument that this factor of speed could lead to exacerbation of crises (25), possibly on the basis of false information spreading through faster channels such as Twitter (Vosoughi et al. 1-6). Contrary to this, Schultz et al. found that Twitter users spread newspaper articles in crises more than blog posts or tweets (25). They suggest that this is because newspapers give a neutral or broader image of events, so Twitter users might aim towards spreading this kind of information to other users.

Focus on present

The Twitter timeline’s focus on the present and the punchy nature of 140 character posts makes it understandable that it is used to share real-time updates in time-sensitive situations like crises. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, demonstrates interest only in what’s happening here and now, stating at one point ‘you’re only as good as your last update’ (Sarno 2009). Twitter’s development over the years reflects how this philosophy has come to be valuable with narratives and reactions around events. In 2006, the ‘About’ page on Twitter said ‘Twitter is for staying in touch’, whereas in 2018 it says ‘Twitter is what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now’ (Twitter About pages, archive.org). Similarly, the tweet-prompting statement changed in 2009 from ‘what are you doing?’ to ‘what’s happening?’ (Rogers 2017, 9). This also reflects a change from focusing on a purely personal angle to a more events-minded approach, where a depiction of one’s surroundings are encouraged to fill up the timeline rather than a depiction of personal, private behaviour.

The tendency towards events of recent years means that Twitter can be a useful source for journalists to find out ‘what’s happening’ around certain events, and the nature of Twitter to encourage and accept this information in short format means the information comes in abundance. The accumulation of this (not always useful) information requires curating, as I have earlier mentioned, and this has become a new role of the journalist. Andy Carvin is often cited as an example of how this should be done. He is famous for gathering live information on Twitter, sharing it either by retweet or tweeting, about the occurrences of the Arab Spring in 2010 and 2011. He noticed a great deal of information about the current happenings of Egypt and aimed to gather this information minute-to-minute on his Twitter feed (Stelter). This form of ‘real-time journalism’ has been celebrated as an example of how to use the affordances of social media to the benefit of journalistic practice. Thus a way to use Twitter to the advantage of journalism involves engaging with the audience and joining in with the same methods used by the public (Marchionni, Kramp and Loosen).

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Journalist behaviour on Twitter

Twitter has been thought of as an asset to journalists for at least a few years (Hermida 2010, 2012) and has even crossed the boundary into becoming a necessity: BBC Global News director Peter Horrocks once told his staff ‘tweet or be sacked’ (Miller 2011, cited in Barnard 2016). Barnard (2016) identifies the practices of journalism on Twitter, including information collection, news sharing, sourcing and public engagement (196-8). Two of these four that I have picked out (information collection and sourcing) are traditional journalistic practices, and the fact that they are moving into the world of social media has some implications for journalism. For one thing, there is less reliance on mainstream media outlets through which journalists can gather information (196). For another, processes that are done by journalists before the process of sharing information with the public (fact acquiring and checking) seem to be shared more with the public from the beginning if the practices occur within a public field. After this fact acquiring process, the checked information flows back into Twitter and news is shared in the same place some of it was acquired. The curation role of the journalist is even more clear when journalist names on Twitter become a marker of trust that allows a lens through which to view happenings that may have previously only been thought of as rumours (Tim Pool, NowThis).

Twitter can be a source of information around events given that people tweet ‘what’s happening’ and it is displayed on the timeline in short, ongoing bursts. This information is used by journalists to help with the creation of news stories, but Twitter is also used beyond collection and sharing of information. Indeed, when these practices occur on Twitter there is inherent social media engagement occurring. But further than this, journalists also share news and use Twitter to talk to others, whether other journalists or the public (Barnard 196-8). This engagement has proven to increase credibility to the audience (Marchionni 243, Barnard 198). Moreover, it manifests as another factor that contributes to the blurring lines between journalists and their audiences. Sharing news is done by both professionals and amateurs on Twitter when considering the fact that retweeting can be taken as a method of this sharing (Barnard 196). The act of spreading news is thus collaborative between journalists and the public alike.

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Getting news from Twitter

Andy Carvin’s example of a new method for journalists shows how it may be that people increasingly get their news from Twitter. Shearer and Gottfried (2017) find that the proportion of Twitter users who get their news from the platform has increased from around half of all users in 2013 to 74% in 2017.

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They tentatively suggest a relation between this figure and the 2016-elected president of the United States using Twitter to make announcements. It is indeed plausible that a place where news happens could become a place where people go to find their news. However, it is also possible that people are not seeking out their news on Twitter, but merely waiting for it to come up. A 2015 study found that 94% of Twitter news users found their news intake merely by reading tweets in their timeline from people they already follow, rather than seeking out information using any of Twitter’s news-aiding functions such as trending topics (Rosenstiel et al.). If this is the case, then it is understandable that journalists mirror the way the public uses social media in order to reach them (Kramp and Loosen 218); if a majority of people get their news on Twitter just through regular use of the website, then it follows that journalists, who aim to spread news, would make use of regular practice on Twitter in order to do this.

Throughout Twitter’s history it has been used as a news source. Kwak et al. (2010) found that tweets by news organisation will reach at least one thousand users no matter how many followers (600). Research suggests that there is a move from viewing news on social media to sharing it (Hermida et al. 2012, 815). In this there is an interesting change in how news is spread and flows through society in recent years compared to years before social media practice. Hermida et al. (2012) found that surveyed users preferred to get their news on social media partly because of ease of sharing (819). People found comfort with information transmitted through their own networks. There is a contrast between this method of receiving information and the traditional methods of mainstream media, sometimes described as ‘gatekeeping’ information in their authoritative choice of what information audiences may get (217; Yaschur 2011, 7). This function is loosened when the news is shared via familiar networks, or by news outlets operating within the familiar tools of interaction - that is to say, through social media accounts. News shared through Facebook, for example, comes from friends and family, so is more likely to make an impact (Boulianne 2015, 525). Twitter, on the other hand, is not necessarily constructed of friends and family. But, the effect can still be carried through in the presence of a personal network of people a user follows on Twitter. The same level of trust may not be put into a follow as into a Facebook friendship, but there is still a degree of endorsement or agreement between users following one another (Cha et al.). Jansen et al. (2009) found that networks on Twitter could be perceived as trusted by individual users, and so had the power to spread knowledge and understanding (2186). The networked nature of Twitter users means a connection between users, and a network that potentially extends to the news outlet themselves (Marwick and boyd 2011, 129). There is a point of conversation across all of it, and this possibility for feedback between users and journalists is a communicative tool that makes news reception more similar to a face-to-face conversation than a broadcast, and thus is arguably more appealing to an audience.

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Twitter as a conversational network

The idea of a network on Twitter is fluid and far from rigid, especially when thought of in the context of hashtag publics (Bruns and Burgess 2011, 6). This is important when it comes to looking at the spread of information across Twitter: when information, news or events are attached to hashtags, they are available to all who choose to participate in using or following the hashtag, and so a broad network around this can be formed. ‘Follower’ networks are a different thing, and hashtag networks can transcend this, since users do not need to be following one another to participate (2). Still, follower networks are also fluid and fluctuate over time. Actors on Twitter are interconnected but not constrained, meaning conversation never has to be confined to one topic or between a specific group of users (boyd et al. 2010, 1). Similarly, unlike Facebook friendships, Twitter followers do not need to be mutual, and one user can follow another without the other following them back, indicating the possibility of a broader network (2). With follower networks and hashtag networks, there can be an overlap and use of a hashtag can also be seen as a way to bring a hashtag topic into view of the user’s follower network (Bruns and Burgess 4). The phenomenon of this fluid and exponentially spreading network is crucial to the nature of the spread of information between users on Twitter.

The presence of conversation between individuals on Twitter sheds more light on the way the platform is used across and within networks. Honeycutt and Herring (2009) argue that Twitter is a ‘noisy’ environment, so the @ function is used as a way to pinpoint conversation and gain focus (3). They found that a portion of Twitter users use the platform for the purpose of conversation, and that the @ sign is the strategy used to this end (2, 7). If, following their assertion, Twitter is used as a mechanism for conversation (10), then there is some connection between this use and the design of the platform itself. That is to say, the fact that conversation happens freely with the help of Twitter functions means that conversation, to some extent, is supposed to happen on Twitter. With conversation comes discussion and the sharing of individual ideas across a network. Therefore, Twitter is particularly interesting to the encouragement of individual idea-sharing. Where Facebook, in its reciprocal user-connections and personal history documentation, is focused on connecting people who know each other, Twitter can be argued to be more focused on connecting ideas across people, because of its use for public and open conversation between fluid and easily accessible non-reciprocal networks.

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T

To talk about the contribution of the quote tweet to this analysis of the Twitter platform, I will first unpack some other Twitter-native functions such as the retweet, #hashtag and @mention. The #hashtag is used as a grouping tool for tweets around similar subjects, and is especially important within event coverage and topic argumentation because it contextualises an individual statement as being part of a wider conversation (Bruns and Burgess 2011, 2). The act of including a hashtag, Bruns and Burgess argue, is speech turned into action, where a statement is accelerated in way that ‘imbue[s] it with affect [and] allows it to affect in turn’ (7). Hashtags therefore contain capacity for political and social action according to their use by other participants in the conversation. Rambukkana (2015) adds that while hashtags contain the potential to be importantly active in a debate, they also can be used in trivial, consumerist or anti-activist means and this must be taken into context when studying hashtag publics (5). Put simply, they are a way to group tweets by topic. In research, this can be used to study broad conversations, issues and events and the surrounding urgency without narrowing down to specific actors (Rogers 2017, 9). However, they are also seen as fleeting in the time-specific nature of hashtag practice (Rambukkana 2015).

@Mentions and @replies are more specific than hashtags in that they are directed towards specific users. The way these are used suggests a practice of conversation-making on Twitter, and carries potential for collaboration among users (Honeycutt and Herring 2009). Use of the @ sign denotes ‘addressivity’ and shows a desire to capture a user’s attention, which contains a necessary parameter for conversation (1-4). The practice can look similar to messages between users, although the messages are public and anyone may join in. This further contributes to the ways in which @mentions create dialogue and collaboration around topics. Following these can also show which voices drive the dialogue in which voice is more prominent or more controversial than others in the user with the most tweets in the conversation, or the user most @ referenced in the conversation (Rogers 2017, 9).

Retweets contain yet more connotations of action, and especially as a practice that have changed significantly over Twitter’s history. At the time of boyd et al.’s (2010) analysis, retweets were performed within the normal frame of a user’s tweet and structured without consistency, but with a vague convention towards ‘RT @user: msg’ (1). Punctuation and syntax were also inconsistent, with users switching between hyphens, dashes or nothing at all. The word ‘retweet’ first appeared in front of a tweet in April 2007, and the abbreviation ‘RT’ wasn’t used until January 2008, almost two years

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after Twitter’s inception. In November 2009 Twitter introduced a retweet function that skipped the process of creating a tweet and merely repeated a tweet onto a user’s timeline with the phrase ‘retweeted by @user’ (Seward).

The retweet has no one simple purpose, and meanings behind the action can be subjective across its instances. Meanings can range from an endorsement of the retweeted tweet, a spotlight for the retweeted user or a desired connection between retweeting user to retweeted (Bosker). Shining a spotlight on a user by retweeting them can be a way of sharing content that is perceived to be valuable to one’s own followers. Retweeting can also be a simple action of engagement with a user (Looi). This is different to the favourite, which contains engagement but is more one-sided than retweets given that a favourite is not a means of putting someone else’s tweet on one’s page. Retweets grew in popularity relatively slowly, even after the feature was added to Twitter’s functionality (Seward). The current use of the retweet feature embodies the desire to share information with others, as I have said earlier, especially in relation to educational or interesting pieces of knowledge, such as news events (Noriega). It can also be a way of inviting people into a conversation without directing the invitation at specific people through @ addressivity (boyd et al. 1). Though retweets are not always endorsements, it is important to understand this connotation in the practice, and a simple retweet without comment can reasonably be understood this way (Noriega).

The quote tweet

Before the introduction of the retweet feature, tweets were copied and pasted into a user’s own tweet and prefaced with some variation of ‘RT’, including the retweeted user’s handle (boyd et al.). When this method was used, it was popular to add commentary before or after the quoted tweet (3). When this was the common practice, therefore, quote tweets were used to the same extent as retweets were; users presented the context of the other user’s tweet while at the same time adding their own commentary. The development of the retweet feature changed this method, since instead of manually copying the tweet into one’s own feed, the retweeted tweet would be automatically reproduced verbatim on the user’s page. The fact that a retweeted tweet according to this feature contains not only the tweet itself, but carries the user’s display picture, handle and the tweet’s own interactions, means that the user who retweeted is less visible than the user who was retweeted. In other words, the tweet remains more clearly attributed to the original author than to the retweeter.

With this retweet function in effect, it was not possible to add commentary to a retweet without using ‘edited retweets’ (Mustafaraj and Mataxas). In 2011, Mustafaraj and Mataxas found that 30% of