Twitter Extract Analysis

G - Twitter timeline
R - Informal/colloquial
A - Himself
M - Multimodal
P - Inform and entertain
S - Indie Music, Leeds Utd, Politics

This text contains tweets from multiple different twitter accounts, giving us an idea of what the man's interests may be. From this text we can gather that he is a fan of football, specifically Leeds Utd as he follows an account which informs him of news about this subject. Hashtags specific to this subject are used in the tweets such as #LUFC which show the subject of the tweet.The register in the tweets overall is mainly informal but there are aspects of different registers in each different tweet, which suggests whether the account is an actual person or whether it's a group account. For example, twitter user L33D5 uses colloquialisms such as "b tru" and his tweets have a conversational tone as he says "please make this true", which gives the impression it is a personal account. The RedRobbo account on the other hand doesn't use a conversational tone, it makes more of a statement and includes a link at the end of the tweet to persuade users to sign the petition. The text is multimodal as it includes pictures alongside each tweet and in some cases these support the tweets' subjects. For example, the tweets about Leeds Utd both contain pictures with a football in them which relates to the account.

There is clear evidence of Computer mediated communication in this news feed. Some tweets contain hash tags such as 'nowplaying' or 'batesout' and hash tags are specific to social networks so it shows where the text has been created. Abbreviations like "b tru" are used in a tweet which suggests a teenager is writing the text as colloquial language is more common within teenagers. Only 140 characters are allowed in tweets so the user may have shortened words to fit everything in or it could be used as a way of saving time. There are also aspects of the presentation which show that this is a twitter timeline. Beside each tweet there is a time which shows when the tweet was created and the tweets are laid out in order of creation so the most recent tweet is at the top of the page. Twitter was created to be a constant flow of updates which represent old texting so they limited the character count and this is clear as the tweets in this timeline are short and contain colloquialisms like 'xtra' and 'tru'. Each tweet has a name and an @ username above it which shows the social network being used as this layout is specific to twitter.

Tweets are generally created to be asynchronous and this is shown by the use of retweets. Retweets allow the user to share a tweet they find interesting without requiring them to engage in conversation with the user who created the tweet. Sometimes people tweet with the intention of getting responses from others but it is never an instant response which shows this way of communicating is computer mediated. For example in the tweets on his timeline the tweets are mainly all statements rather than questions that require responses.