This past June, Charlie Warzel, a senior technology writer for BuzzFeed noted the prevalence of quote tweets in his Twitter feed: Warzel noticed that people were using the quote tweet to win arguments rather than engaging in a “healthy” response. Kate Starbird, a design and engineering researcher at the University of Washington, agreed with this assessment. Starbird noted that she and fellow researchers had found that while retweets often remain inside of social media “echo chamber,” quote tweets often serve as bridges between echo chambers. According to Starbird, using quote tweets often serves to draw attention to the opposition, pulling…
Author: Jim Brown
Jim Brown
Jim Brown is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Camden where he also serves as Director of the Digital Studies Center (DiSC). His research addresses the ethical and rhetorical underpinnings of computational environments.