If you’ve never heard of Twitter, then you must be someone living under the rock.

Twitter is a social networking and news website where users exchange brief messages known as tweets. Tweeting is the practice of sending quick messages to your Twitter followers in the hopes that they would find them informative and entertaining. Microblogging is another term that might be used to describe Twitter and tweeting.

For today’s RCL post, I’m going to be talking about the  use of deliberation among people on social media, specifically Twitter.

https://twitter.com/tobishiyanbola/status/1621229284583956481?s=46&t=iIQxU0LbgPF1s2eg9kWOZg 

A user on Twitter with the username, @tobishiyanbola posted a tweet on the 2nd February of 2023 saying that,

Lately, I’ve noticed everybody looks OK until you eventually have a deep conversation with them. And then, you’ll realize that, this is a sad generation of people struggling to survive through smiling faces and pretty pictures.

 

This tweet became a hit tweet and gained more than 6.5M views from people across the globe. In the replies, many comments agreed with the statement, and some even shared their personal stories or experiences relating to it. There is quite a lot of exhibit that shows deliberation in the replies.

In the replies, people said they understood what was being said and gave encouraging words to motivate each other.

From the comment thread up here, we can see someone expressing their thoughts, and the other person was giving words of encouragement to them. We can see how the first person was describing his negative thought on life, and the other person was giving his positive thought on how life is and how to feel happy again. The first person insisted that there’s nothing in life that would actually make them happy again, and the other person was giving his best advice, which was to seek a therapist and try to find happiness in their life again. I believe there’s some deliberative approach here because although they both might have a different viewpoint on this issue, they both seem to be open to expanding their mindset and listening to what the others got to say.

Here’s another exhibit of deliberation being used in the conversation among online users:

I believe that this conversation contains deliberative aspects as these two were discussing and sharing stories on how accurate the statement from the original tweet is and how it can actually be seen in real life. The things discussed were very meaningful, and they were also very respectful and appreciative of the other person’s thoughts.

If you scroll down through all the other comments, you will see people expressing themselves and how they could relate to this tweet. The discussion about the original tweet made people deliberate in the replies as much as possible. It also helps the other online readers think more about the statement and reflect on themselves.