Social Media Experts Talk Twitter
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The controversy over a high school student’s Tweet and the reaction of people in Governor Brownback’s office to it has more than just fellow Tweeters weighing in.
About 460,000 new Twitter accounts are established every day. One-hundred-forty million tweets are sent in just as much time according to the Social Technology Review. The president of the Social Media Club of Kansas City says it’s one of the new ways to have a conversation.
“Anything that you can do off-line, increasingly you’re able to do online and able to bring your friends into and your circle even beyond your friends in different ways,” said Aaron Deacon, Social Media Club of Kansas City.
In Emma Sullivan’s case, the conversation went beyond her circle of friends and so did the controversy when the governor’s staff and the school principal got involved.
“Because of what happened with social media and because of social media response, and the whole area has gotten involved from the social media perspective,” Deacon said. “It really just kind of amplifies little things.”
People have the right to Tweet what they want as well as respond to tweets according to a local law professor.
“This one was an easy one,” said Bill Black, UMKC School of Law Associate Professor. “This was an absolute core of the first amendment, what it was designed to protect, the ability to exercise your right of speech and protest against elected and public officials, so this one was just plain dumb.”
Bill Black adds it’s perfectly normal to monitor social media. It’s the kind of judgment exercised in reaction to what was read that has experts worried.
