The Field of Twitter

Summary of the presentation by Sarah, Valerie & Lotte

A pizza restaurant using a hashtag that was created for victims of domestic violence, a 9/11 memorial tweet from a sex toy company, and food brand popchips tweeting ‘’eternal poptimist’’ about Martin Luher King’s day. These are just a few examples of organizations acting inappropriately on Twitter. In this video about organizations on Twitter, John Oliver claims organizations have no business at all in engaging in popular discussions on Twitter, but should just stick to ‘’selling us shit’’. We propose to look at this problem from the perspective of Bourdieu’s field theory.

We established media and social media are – among others - examples of fields that PR departments of organizations are engaged in. Whether Twitter is a field on its own, or whether it is part of the larger social media field remains a point of discussion, since organizations often use the same strategies on multiple platforms. However, we propose Twitter can be viewed as field of its own, because it has its own rules, actors and specific capitals.

When thinking of Twitter as a field, we identified all forms of capital Bourdieu distinguished. Social capital is perhaps the most important kind of capital, because on Twitter it matters how many people follow you and will read your messages. Cultural capital is also relevant, because you need knowledge and know-how to write interesting tweets. Economic capital can be useful in gaining more social capital by writing sponsored tweets. Finally, symbolic capital can be achieved by having many followers and posting interesting tweets, which lead to prestige and credibility.

With regards to the video, the ‘doxa’ – rules of the game – of Twitter are that organizations should probably not engage in every popular hashtag discussion, like what happened in this video. Rather, they should only comment on issues with a ‘fit’, in a way that makes it relevant for the organization. For example, instead of using the hashtag for domestic violence as a way of attracting attention, organizations could also use the hashtag to talk about their own policy on domestic violence. Of course, many more social media rules for organizations can  be distinguished, such as adopting an informal tone, posting regularly, and engaging in a dialogue with followers.

Returning to the video, John Oliver mentions a hashtag organizations should use: #WeUnderstandThatAsCorporateEntitiesOurPresenceInCertainDiscussionsIsNotAlwaysRequiredSoWeWillStriveToLimitOurActivitiesToJustSellingYouShit. We concluded that organizations do not have to use this hashtag and then cancel their account immediately. Rather, they can use Twitter, but need to be careful in which they discussions they participate and how.