Guardian ‘ As of 2021, only 28% of the UK populationuses Twitter. But it has outsize influence. What matters is who is on there: which people are experiencing the white-hot anger of engaging daily with the timeline. “Political elites are on Twitter every day, and for all the warnings that Twitter isn’t real life, it feels like real life to them,” said Ezra Klein, the author of Why We’re Polarised, in a 2020 interview with the Verge. “They’re stuck in a hyper-polarised informational system and it influences the candidates they support, the messages they emphasise, the stories they focus on.”
Klein was speaking about US politics but his analysis applies to Britain too. It’s not just British politicians: it’s our media class – celebrities as well. If you have a public profile, the likelihood is that you’re on Twitter and active. It influences which topics are afforded importance: this week we saw Kay Burley ask Angela Rayner about whether women could have a penis, a question the Labour deputy leader quite rightly said was prominent on social media. These discussions then spill over into policy, as we saw this week when the government excluded trans people from a ban on conversion practices.’
Guardian, April 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please note: ALL comments are moderated before publishing.