I don't really use tweets for individual communication. But it seems like a great place to quickly scan for newsworthy current events (plus I just love The Onion news parodies!)
While normal TV & online news channels give you BBC, Fox, al Jazeera, CNN, and so on, Twitter enables users to create their own Tweet-News roster- a tickler of news sources that can be far more precisely crafted. This is because "Tweet-News channels" can include non-traditional, non-mainstream sources that might not matter to most people. For example, physicists interested in the search for the alleged Higgs Boson particle may want CERN news-tweets; social activists may like UNPeacekeeping news-tweets; financial experts may get RealWorldEcon news-tweets; Catholic church leaders may choose CatholicNewsSvc, while Methodists may prefer MethEcuNews.
Let me make a broad leap, and ask a BIG question:
Is there a down-side to narrowing the spectrum of human attention and interaction with each other? Social bonding between members is important, but a balanced society needs to remain broadminded enough to understand and accept differences within and outside of their culture. Could people's ability to precisely sculpt their human affiliations through uses of technology cause or reflect a growing propensity towards a narcissistic culture?
Buber emphasized the value of I & Thou exchanges versus "I & It". When people watch a normal newscast, they are pulled out of themselves and pulled into a serendipitous array of news stories that can not all personally relate to their primary interests. This form of media communication seems to encourage empathy and increase social cohesion.
Customizing the intake and exchange of information through computer mediated communication (CMC) vastly reduces serendipitous CMC encounters with those outside one's one circle. Is this decrease harmless? Or is there a point where specialization becomes symptomatic of an attitude towards diversity and "otherness" that society should be concerned with? Furthermore, if even one's intimate, individual encounter with individuals among "one's own" are increasingly forsaken in favor of connecting with and projecting one's identity towards one's chosen
groups, could this reduction of individual intimate connectivity reveal the seeping in of narcissism, even within one's own community?
We can use technology intentionally, or we can just use technology. The role and effects of computer-mediated-communication in human individuals and societies is affected by those choices. That is why it is valuable to examine, give thought to, then have plenty of discussion about these choices and their potential outcomes.
