The advent of social media has brought about a metamorphosis to contemporary society; the way in which we communicate with others, access news, generate income and interact with the world at large has been revolutionised. Businesses employ social media strategies to market their products and brands; activists use social networks to foster awareness and support for their causes; individuals and groups alike employ the medium itself as a means to sustainable revenue. Clearly, this digital interconnectivity has ‘become an integral part of everyday life […] [influencing] how we engage with friends, family, colleagues and politics.’[1] But what can this new wave of media afford the modern writer? Does it present pitfalls to be observed and considered?

In understanding what social media can bring to the contemporary writer, it must first be defined and distinguished from its oft-interchangeable term ‘social network’. Dhiraj Murthy’s distinction is useful in that he defines social media as ‘a publishing orientated medium,’ dissimilar to a social network since its ‘emphasis is not as “bounded” to communities of friends.’[2] This is important since it is imperative for an aspiring writer to generate an audience outside of one’s sphere and to publish content to this audience. Miller et. al. add, ‘it is the content rather than the platform that is most significant when it comes to why social media matters.”[3] This is opposed to a social networking site’s primary focus of ‘[fostering] friend connections through social sharing,’[4] and serves as another useful definition in assessing the advantages and disadvantages of social media for a writer. In essence, it is the content of said writer’s work which should be the core focus of this essay; rather than technicalities of any particular social network platform. As such, this essay will primarily focus on Twitter as it is ‘broad-cast based and encourages the accumulation of more and more followers who are aware [sic] of a user’s published content.’[5] That classification is particularly apt since it is practically the definition of a writer’s ideal career trajectory.

Arguably, traditional publishing has always been a glacially slow process—and still is when it comes to print. Social media, however, allows written work to be published and shared immediately to a respective audience. Indeed, ‘a single tweet […] can travel far and wide, crossing many networks in the process.’[6] Modern writers are then able to use social media to subvert conventional means of publishing and reach their readers quickly. This also affords a certain kind of intimacy with the audience of the writer’s work, as anybody can respond to a tweet or send one to any other Twitter user. Joanne Mallon, a journalist and social media consultant, suggests that ‘it’s never been easier to connect with people.’[7] This rings true, particularly for Twitter, as any individual can follow any author they choose, receiving updates about that author’s work and personal interests. More than any other time in history, bonds between creator and consumer can be cultivated and developed to a deeper degree. A budding writer can even ‘tweet an editor, […] agent or […] publisher,’[8] generating potential avenues into traditional publishing and income.

On top of this, social media allows for the careful management of a writer’s persona, allowing instant cultivation of a specific brand or personality to attract potential readers. This is because, in selecting which content to publish, ‘social media affords certain kinds of social performance.’[9] Each user is able to manage their appearance and personality as ‘what is shown on social media is the curated truth.’[10] As Daniel Miller et al. discuss, in the case of Chinese migrant workers who employ social media to transcend ‘extremely substandard conditions,’[11] online spaces are ‘where people craft and enact a more permanent version of themselves.’[12] Writers can harness this permanency to establish a particular tone or narrative, furthering their careers and marketing their brand.

Twitter itself is also useful as a textual medium; its imposed constraints of one-hundred and forty characters (now two-hundred and eighty) has spawned platform-specific narrative forms and poetry, such as the ‘twihaiku’. Poets like Benjamin Zephaniah—who can be seen regularly tweeting lines of verse to his followers[13]—have embraced the form. Some authors have gone so far as to devote entire twitter accounts to creating fiction. They can even deepen their storytelling methods by utilising the interactive nature of social media. This can be achieved by collaborating with other users through the lens of their fictitious personas, transgressing the lines between audience and author. An example can be observed with the twitter account @TheSunVanished[14], which follows the story of a protagonist navigating their way through an alternative reality in which the sun has disappeared. The author of this feed often responds to other twitter users who ‘roleplay’ within the bounds of the established fiction[15]. As shown in these examples, social media, through collaboration and sharing, can be used to ‘reinforce or subvert traditional notions of authorship, taste and creativity.’[16] These new forms of storytelling and communication present more tools for the modern writer to wield—a clear advantage.

Social media, however, is not without negative aspects. Matt Haig, author of Notes of a Nervous Planet; an exploration of the effects the modern world has on mental health, suggests ‘[social media] platforms create divisions, exploit our insecurities and risk our health.’[17] Writing itself, as a profession, is a predominantly isolating endeavour. It involves little to no physical activity. Writers are then predisposed to mental health conditions such as depression.[18] This, in addition to social media’s tendency to ‘exacerbate or even [trigger] […] illnesses,’[19] presents the potential for negative impacts upon a modern writer’s well-being. Social media can even lead to ‘comparisons that make individuals feel inferior,’[20] albeit in the specific form of career and audience comparison between two individual writers.

This is coupled with the fact that social media platforms are corporately owned and designed to generate profit. Murphy states that Twitter’s ‘ultimate allegiance’—as with any other social media platform’s—’is to investors and share-holders’[21]. Therefore, the platform itself has potential to act in ways detrimental to its individual users, the modern writer included. Haig confirms this notion, comparing social media platforms to ‘the tobacco or fast-food industries, where vested interests deny the existence of blatant problems that were not there before.’[22] This can be readily observed in the case of Patrick S. Tomlinson, author of Gate Crashers, who was banned from Twitter, losing an audience of “more than thirty-eight thousand followers.”[23] For this Tomlinson puts blame to ‘trolls’—a well-established web colloquialism for ‘harasser’—exploiting the ‘weakness of [social media] algorithms’ limited reasoning to launch coordinated mass false reporting attacks against their critics and targets.’[24] The platform’s unwillingness to consider Tomlinson’s case bares to light the potentially devastating effects of ‘starting over basically from scratch’[25] in terms of audience; all due to a social media corporation’s decision to cut a writer from their platform.

Another pertinent example of the disadvantages of social media comes from Marvel’s firing of Chuck Wendig, author of Blackbirds and Star Wars: Aftermath. Wendig states he was fired from working on then forthcoming property Shadow of Vader for the ‘negativity and vulgarity that [his] tweets bring.’[26] Regardless of its justification, Wendig’s case shows how social media can be weaponised, unintentionally or otherwise, by potential employers in order to make decisions about a writer’s career opportunities. Put simply, an editor or publisher etc. can fire or refuse to hire a writer based upon their social media content. From this it is clear that as much as social media can be used to a writer’s advantage in seeking out employment opportunities, it can also work as a detriment.

This is nothing to say of the potential time-sink that social media presents. Mallon remarks that writers are ‘[b]orn to [p]rocrastinate,’[27] so care must be taken to avoid losing one’s productivity to the near endless scrolling of social media.

Ultimately, because ‘the questions and problems that social media provoke are a reflection on some of the most fundamental questions we are grappling with in contemporary societies,’[28] it is difficult to both understand social media and apply it to the specific lens of beneficial and detrimental aspects for the modern writer. However, as is clear, social media can bring about many advantages as well as disadvantages, and to ignore its impact is to deny its potential. ‘New media constantly attains new possibilities,’[29] even if such possibilities are a complex profile; the modern writer must then attempt to harness the advantages while being mindful of the drawbacks.

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[1] Sam Hinton and Larissa Hjorth, Understanding Social Media (London: SAGE, 2013), 2.

[2] Dhiraj Murphy, Twitter (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), 8.

[3] Daniel Miller, et al., How the World Changed Social Media, (London: ULC Press, 2016), 1.

[4] Murphy, 8.

[5] Ibid., 8.

[6] Ibid., 12.

[7] Joanne Mallon, Social Media for Writers (Brighton: The Big Hand, 2015), 10.

[8] Mallon, 10.

[9] Hinton and Hjorth, Understanding Social Media, (London: SAGE, 2013), 3.

[10] Daniel Miller, et al., 110.

[11] Ibid., 111.

[12] Ibid., 111.

[13] Charlotte Cripps, ‘Twihaiku? Micropoetry? The rise of Twitter poetry’, The Independent, 16 July 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/twihaiku-micropoetry-the-rise-of-twitter-poetry-8711637.html [accessed 11 November 2018]

[14] @TheSunVanished’s Twitter feed, https://twitter.com/thesunvanished [accessed 13 November 2018]

[15] @TheSunVanished, Twitter post, 12 July 2018, 4:59 PM., https://twitter.com/TheSunVanished/status/1017559159313719296 [accessed 13 November 2018]

[16] Hinton and Hjorth, 82.

[17] Matt Haig, ‘I used to think social media was a force for good. Now the evidence says I was wrong’, The Guardian, 6 September 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/06/social-media-good-evidence-platforms-insecurities-health [accessed 11 November 2018]

[18] Natacha D.Emerson, et al., ‘Behavioral risk factors for self-reported depression across the lifespan’, Mental Health & Prevention 12 (2018): 36-41, doi: 10.1016/j.mhp.2018.09.002 [accessed 13 November 2018]

[19] Haig

[20] Daniel Miller, et al., 202.

[21] Murphy, 21.

[22] Haig

[23] Patrick S. Tomlinson, 29 September 2018, ‘How Trolls Hack Twitter to Silence the Rest of Us’, Patrick S. Tomlinson’s Blog, https://www.patrickstomlinson.com/2018/09/29/how-trolls-hack-twitter-to-silence-us [accessed 14 November 2018]

[24] Tomlinson

[25] Ibid.

[26] Chuck Wendig, 12 October 2018, ‘In Which I Am Fired From Marvel’, Terribleminds, http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2018/10/12/in-which-i-am-fired-from-marvel [accessed 14 November 2018]

[27] Mallon, 17.

[28] Hinton and Hjorth, 136.

[29] Daniel Miller, et al., 206.

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Bibliography

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Emerson, Natacha D., Gary W.Small, David A.Merrill, Stephen T.Chen, Fernando Torres-Gil and Prabha Siddarth. ‘Behavioral risk factors for self-reported depression across the lifespan’. Mental Health & Prevention 12 (2018): 36-41. doi: 10.1016/j.mhp.2018.09.002 [accessed 13 November 2018]

Haig, Matt. ‘I used to think social media was a force for good. Now the evidence says I was wrong’. The Guardian. 6 September 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/06/social-media-good-evidence-platforms-insecurities-health [accessed 11 November 2018]

Hinton, Sam and Larissa Hjorth. Understanding Social Media. London: SAGE, 2013.

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Miller, Daniel, Elisabetta Costa, Nell Haynes, Tom McDonald, Razvan Nicolescu, Jolynna Sinanan, Juliano Spyer, Shriram Venkatraman and Xinyuan Wang. How the World Changed Social Media. London: ULC Press, 2016.

Murphy, Dhiraj. Twitter. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013.

Tomlinson, Patrick S. 29 September 2018. ‘How Trolls Hack Twitter to Silence the Rest of Us’. Patrick S. Tomlinson’s Blog. https://www.patrickstomlinson.com/2018/09/29/how-trolls-hack-twitter-to-silence-us [accessed 14 November 2018]

@TheSunVanished’s Twitter feed. https://twitter.com/thesunvanished [accessed 13 November 2018]

Wendig, Chuck. 12 October 2018. ‘In Which I Am Fired From Marvel’. Terribleminds. http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2018/10/12/in-which-i-am-fired-from-marvel [accessed 14 November 2018]