Last week, the White House sent out this press release:
WASHINGTON, DC – President Obama will participate in the first ever Twitter Town Hall at the White House on Wednesday, July 6 in the East Room. Twitter co-founder and Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey will moderate a conversation between President Obama and Americans across the country about the economy and jobs.
Twitter users can submit questions using the hashtag #AskObama. More information from Twitter can be found at the event’s homepage: http://askobama.twitter.com.
In the last couple of years, Twitter has exploded and many wonder why. In this study conducted by the Pear Analytics, it was concluded that 40.55% of the tweets were pointless babble; 37.55% were conversational; 8.7% have “pass along value”; 5.85% were self-promotional; 3.75% are spam; and only 3.6% were news.
Pointless babble seems a little harsh, and in actuality, the phrase undermines what is truly going on. The technical phrase for this kind of talk is small talk or phatic communication. In spite of seeming to have little useful purpose, as the pointless babble moniker would seem to suggest, small talk is a bonding ritual and a strategy for managing interpersonal relationships.
Wikipedia summarizes the point nicely:
It serves many functions in helping to define the relationships between friends, work colleagues, and new acquaintances. In particular, it helps new acquaintances to explore and categorize each other's social position. Small talk is closely related to the need for people to maintain positive face — to feel approved-of by those who are listening to them. It lubricates social interactions in a very flexible way, although the desired function is often dependent on the point in the conversation at which the small talk occurs.
Thus, Twitter helps to facilitate commuinication that strengthen social bonds and the President is smart to insert himself into that.
As a closing point, we will be live Tweeting during the coference, so check us out at @UIC_CivicSource!
