Clockwise: social-media junkies Shane Warne and Courtney Love; Olympic gold-medal-winning swimmer Stephanie Rice; Ashes-winning cricketer Kevin Pietersen; Logies-tweeting comedian Catherine Deveny and Canberra-based academic Julie Posetti.
Clockwise: social-media junkies Shane Warne and Courtney Love; Olympic gold-medal-winning swimmer Stephanie Rice; Canberra-based academic Julie Posetti; Logies-tweeting comedian Catherine Deveny; and Ashes-winning cricketer Kevin Pietersen.

Used cleverly, social-media phenomenon Twitter is a powerful networking tool helping to teach a generation of technophiles to be succinct. In the hands of twits, however, it can be a - sometimes hilariously - destructive force. Good Weekend's Amanda Hooton investigates.

Ahoy, armchair analysts of modern etiquette. A fresh social scourge is among us: the Twitter transgression. Where once we made our thoughtless remarks, our badly phrased jokes, our misjudged witticisms only to those long-suffering souls within earshot at cocktail parties, now our faux pas are going global.

The possibilities for offending others on Twitter are endless, since the whole point of the online social network is to connect you with as many people as you can electronically stand. (Lady Gaga, whose tolerances are wide, has 30 million followers on Twitter and Facebook combined.) If hell is other people, Twitter is eternal damnation 21st-century style: instantaneous, universal and internet-
enabled. Imagine the most embarrassing thing you've ever said: the thing that, even years later, brings a hot flush of shame to your entire being. Then imagine you said it (in 140 characters or less) to a cast of thousands or even millions. This is the Twitter nightmare. As Churchill might have said, if he'd had a Twitter account: never has so much been said, to insult so many, in so few words.

<i>Illustration by Adam Davidson</i> Illustration by Adam Davidson

Among the international casualties have been British Labour candidate Stuart MacLennan, who, in the midst of last year's UK election campaign, tweeted about old people being "coffin dodgers" and called one woman a "boot". In the US, Berkeley graduate Connor Riley tweeted about her job offer from technology giant Cisco: "Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work"; and in 2009 singer Courtney Love called fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir a "nasty, lying, hosebag thief" on Twitter - not to mention accusing her of prostitution, assault and drug use.

Closer to home, a clutch of our own cock-ups has also emerged. Last year, comedian and writer Catherine Deveny tweeted from the Logies: "I do so hope Bindi Irwin gets laid" and "Rove [McManus] and Tasma [Walton, his second wife] look so cute ... hope she doesn't die, too." In September, swimmer Stephanie Rice insulted homosexuals after a Wallabies victory ("Suck on that faggots!"), in October, former AFL player Peter "Spida" Everitt maligned the possibility of a late-night cuppa in the wake of an alleged AFL sex offence ("Girls!! When will you learn! At 3am when you are blind drunk & you decide to go home with a guy ITS NOT FOR A CUP OF MILO. Allegedly ..."), and last month Shane Warne waded electronically into relationship scandal yet again (too many tweets, texts and internet messages to go into here, alas).

In every case, the fallout has been damaging. Stuart MacLennan was fired by the Labour Party; Connor Riley had her job offer withdrawn by an indignant Cisco; and (at time of writing) Love had her Twitter account suspended and is due to face court on defamation charges next month. Deveny was sacked as a columnist by The Age; Rice lost her Jaguar sponsorship deal; Everitt forfeited enormous public support; and Shane Warne ... continues on his merry path of media stardom. Clearly, disaster all round.

Twitter was founded in 2006, and by october last year it had 160 million users worldwide, sending an alleged 50 million tweets a day, or 600 a second. In Australia, it's estimated 2.5 million people have Twitter accounts, some 1.2 million of which are active; that two per cent of total global traffic comes from this country; and that we average 1.8 tweets per capita per month - more than the US, Canada and Ireland, who all average 1.7.

Of course, just because we're sending lots of tweets doesn't mean we're stuffing up: most are not insulting or dramatic or even terribly interesting. In 2009, a US study of 2000 random tweets found that 40.55 per cent were "pointless babble" - news accounted for only 3.6 per cent, and messages with pass-along value 8.7 per cent. (Spam constituted 3.75 per cent, self-promotion 5.85 per cent, and conversation 37.55 per cent.) Another US study found that about 80 per cent of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than 10 times, around 40 per cent of accounts have never sent a tweet, and 25 per cent of accounts have no followers.

Among regular tweeters, however, are many who write things that, as readers, we might find unnecessary (does anyone need to know about the passing of 24-year-old Geelong woman Amanda Williams's mucus plug during her 12-hour labour?) or tragically inappropriate (why did Florida mother Shellie Ross post multiple tweets as rescue workers tried and failed to save her two-year-old son after he was found face down in the swimming pool?) or just plain boring (has Serena Williams no more interesting questions to offer the universe than "How do I make beans?? My mom is not answering her phone!! Hurry!!"). But for most of us, most of the time, even our worst tweets don't get us sacked, publicly vilified or sued.

But sometimes they do. According to psychologists, a phenomenon known as the online disinhibition effect, caused by the conditions of online communication - its anonymity, invisibility and fantasy elements - can make people feel disconnected from their everyday personalities. Freed from the constraints that come with other people knowing who they are, and protected (at least notionally) from repercussions, tweeters can behave in ways they wouldn't dream of in normal life - rather like Ku Klux Klan members, bank robbers or even talkback radio callers. "A lot of the danger comes with [Twitter's] accountability and accuracy issues," explains Andrea Carson, a journalist working on a PhD in old and new media at the University of Melbourne. "While it has speed as its strength, it doesn't have depth or accuracy ... The veneer of anonymity ... can make people very brazen, and as a result very cruel."

In fact, most of us are not anonymous on Twitter at all, if push comes to shove. When Telstra worker Leslie Nassar set up a Twitter account in the name of federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy in 2009, Nassar's tweets ("Being a minister is so much better than being a fireman or astronaut. Suck it, childhood dreams!") led inexorably back to him, leading to disciplinary action and, perhaps coincidentally on Telstra's part, the first set of corporate Twitter-use guidelines in Australia. Under the law, meanwhile, "There might be preliminary matters of identification, just to be sure who's who," says Jenny Inness, senior associate at Harmers Workplace Lawyers, "but that's just a matter of the factual background. The general [legal] principles apply equally to Twitter as they do to other things." Anonymity, therefore, is no defence. Twitter itself, in fact, may be a route to recourse. In October last year, the High Court of England and Wales allowed for an anonymous tweeter to be served with court documents - via tweet.

Canberra-based academic Julie Posetti is also grappling with the legal ramifications of Twitter. Last November she was tweeting updates from the Journalist Education Association Conference at the University of Technology, Sydney. During one session, Posetti paraphrased several of former Australian journalist Asa Wahlquist's remarks. Her tweets included: "Wahlquist: 'Chris Mitchell (Oz Ed) goes down the Eco-Fascist line' on #climatechange" and "Wahlquist: 'In the lead up to the election the Ed in Chief was increasingly telling me what to write.' It was prescriptive." Having seen the tweets, Chris Mitchell, the editor-in-chief of The Australian, contacted Wahlquist, who claimed she had been quoted inaccurately and taken out of context. An audiotape of the session appeared to confirm the accuracy of Posetti's reported tweets, but in December Mitchell said he would sue Posetti for defamation. Posetti, however, believes her tweets were a fair report of a matter of public interest. "I was tweeting summaries of matters of public interest being discussed in a public forum," she says. "As a journalism academic this is something I often do." She admits "the scale of the response has taken many people by surprise, and it has been quite a stressful experience for me to be the focus of it". Chris Mitchell could not be reached by Good Weekend for comment.

Whether or not this case goes to trial - it would be the first Twitter defamation case in Australia to do so - it reveals the possibilities, and yet more potential dangers, of Twitter. Julie Posetti sees a future in which journalists - and what she calls "citizen journalists", or engaged members of the public - will increasingly use networks like Twitter to post about public debate and breaking news, which means that the scope of their potential faux pas will presumably rise accordingly. "I suspect that many non-professional users of [Twitter] are not fully across the laws of publishing," she admits, "nor do some see [their tweets] as an act of publication." Tread carefully, in other words.

Of course, not all of us are journalists, citizen or otherwise, and most Twitter trip-ups have nothing to do with defamation law; they are, more often than not, just plain, old-fashioned foolishness. "A lot of regular people on Twitter just kind of forget that other people are there," says Mark Cameron, CEO of digital media agency Working Three. "When people are communicating with their mobile device or their computer, they feel they're only having a conversation with one person, when of course it's far, far wider than that."

"You've basically created a space that's much bigger than what you're used to dealing with," agrees psychologist Rebecca Mathews, who has researched social networking for the Australian Psychological Society. And in this space, because we lack body language, tone of voice or any other face-to-face indicators to help show what we mean, we're much more likely to send - and receive, for that matter - the wrong message. In 2005, a study found that people consistently overestimate their ability to communicate effectively online. We believe our sarcasm in emails, for instance, will be communicated 80 per cent of the time, when in fact the actual figure is less than 60 per cent. And we're similarly overconfident about our abilities to communicate anger, sadness, seriousness and humour.

For some reason, sports people seem to suffer particularly from this overconfidence. The Dutch World Cup squad were banned from using Twitter last year after striker Eljero Elia described one of his friends as a "Moroccan cancer". Afterwards, he protested that he'd only meant it as a joke - his friend returned the compliment, calling him a "nigger" - but the Dutch football authorities failed to see the funny side. Cricketer Kevin Pietersen, meanwhile, might have intended to be funny when he pre-empted an announcement of the English limited-overs team in August with the tweet: "Done for rest of summer!! Man of the World Cup T20 and dropped from the T20 side too. It's a f...k up!!" But no one else was laughing. Pietersen languished for much of the English summer on loan at Surrey from Hampshire, before endearing himself to Australians this summer with more Twitter commentary. "What should a groundsmen make sure he does 2days out from a test match????" he tweeted after rain affected the practice nets before the Adelaide Test. "Cover the nets when it rains maybe???" "PATHETIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Of course, it's possible that tweeters like Pietersen are simply tragically misunderstood. "When it comes to how we reason about other people, especially people we don't know, it's generally the case that it's very easy to make mistakes," says psychologist Craig Errey. This is true not only when we send texts, but also when we receive them. Thanks to online psychological tendencies like low rapport (where people online tend to view others with suspicion) and negativity (a 2002 study found that colleagues consistently rate each other more negatively on email than they do with a pen and paper), the chances of us looking, as Monty Python would have us do, on the bright side of Twitter life are slim. As both senders and receivers, we're likely to be negative, suspicious and think the worst of others' motives. Sigh.

Perhaps we're also much too sensitive. The average age of a Twitter user is, apparently, 39; and a 39-year-old is not only older than the average Facebook and MySpace user, but also more likely to take offence at the content of tweets. "The Gen Ys, I think, are more familiar with the whole online discourse, and will exchange that very frank and full exchange that's typical of Twitter," says journalist Andrea Carson. "I think [Gen Ys] are fairly robust, and perhaps they deal with it all a bit better than, say, my generation, which is Gen X - who are used to more courtesy and, probably, a less frank exchange."

"Our social skills are lagging behind our technological means of communication" is how Rebecca Mathews puts it: technology has evolved more quickly than our social interaction skills. And until our rules of etiquette catch up, the best thing we can do - the thing that will help us keep our jobs, maintain our relationships and stay out of prison - is think, hard, before we tweet. And failing that, apologise. Profusely, and in person.

"If something you've done online affects another person," concludes Mathews, "the only way you can really undo it is by having a personal contact with that individual, to apologise and talk through it." You mean actually meeting in person and communicating face to face? "Absolutely."

Oh, the irony. After Twitter's great triumph - in making instant, international communication easier and cheaper and more high-tech than ever - what are we left with? The old personal interaction: the one-on-one, eyeball-to-eyeball begging for forgiveness.

And if the prospect of that doesn't stop you tripping up on Twitter, nothing will.

I am Spartacus

I am Spartacus Twenty-seven-year-old English trainee accountant Paul Chambers' life was shattered last year, all thanks to a single tweet. Planning a trip to Northern Ireland last January to visit a girl he had met online, and worried his flight from Robin Hood Airport near Doncaster would be cancelled due to bad weather, Chambers posted the following jocular tweet: "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!" Soon afterwards, police came to his home and arrested him. He was prosecuted and subsequently convicted under 1930s nuisance caller legislation. Last month, his appeal was rejected, the presiding judge calling his original tweet "menacing in its content". Chambers - who lost his job after his conviction - was ordered to pay his original fine of £1000, plus a further £2000 legal bill. In an interesting twist, fellow tweeters all over the world have since rallied to support Chambers, thousands retweeting his original message with the hashtag "I Am Spartacus" - a reference to Roman slaves' support of their downtrodden hero. The topic became the most popular worldwide subject on Twitter, and Stephen Fry - a well-known tweeter - has offered, via Twitter, to pay Chambers' fine and costs. Chambers, who now lives with the girl from Northern Ireland, is considering a further appeal against the verdict.

FedEx

In 2009 James Andrews, a PR executive for American PR firm Ketchum, flew to Memphis to talk to one of his company's largest clients, international freight company FedEx. Ironically, he was there to talk about harnessing social media; yet only minutes after his plane landed, he posted the following tweet: "True confession but I'm in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say 'I would die if I had to live here!' " By the afternoon of the same day, a senior FedEx executive had emailed a reply that read, in part: "Mr Andrews, If I interpret your post correctly, these are your comments about Memphis a few hours after arriving in the global headquarters city of one of your key and lucrative clients, and the home of arguably one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of business, FedEx founder Fred Smith. Many of my peers and I feel this is inappropriate. We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work [you do] for us around the globe. We are confident, however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position ... A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write ..." Andrews' response presumably contained pleading on bended knee. Ketchum, meanwhile, released this statement: "It was a lapse in judgment and we've apologised to our client. We greatly value this long-standing client relationship. It is our privilege to work with them." To this, FedEx - unlike James Andrews - preserved a dignified silence.

Shane Warne

Warnie, Warnie, Warnie. With so many electronic roads to ruin, how can a man choose only one? In December, the English press claimed the infamous Sultan of Spin was having a steamy affair with actress Liz Hurley, an affair they were alerted to by months of flirty public tweets. Hurley to Warne (and her 64,000 followers): "Sammy [Hurley's dog] sends you a special lick and says he'd like to put his silky head on your shoulder", and Warnie to Hurley: "Lots of people asking about my spinners underwear !!! Want to try a pair ? Big parachute style or skimpy ones, what color?" Amid a whirlwind of tweets, texts and clinches in hotel lobbies, the pair seemed to have been caught red-handed by the little blue bird. But to be honest, who really knows what's going on? Recently, yet another woman appeared on the scene - Melburnian Adele Angeleri, to whom Warne allegedly sent more than 100 "lewd" texts (not tweets, this time) - and the Liz lovefest seems over. "Er.....please take any mentions of me in the latest thrilling installment of the Jerry Springer-esque saga with a LARGE pinch of salt," she tweeted. All that does seem clear is that Liz Hurley's three-year marriage to Arun Nayar is over, and so is any apparent hope for Warne and his ex-wife Simone Callaghan (who had been sharing a house in Melbourne and were rumoured to be back together). How do we know these things? Because Hurley and Warne have posted them on Twitter, of course.

This article first appeared in The Age Good Weekend magazine. 22/1/2011

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/hitting-the-twitter-wall-the-brickbats-and-benefits-20110125-1a3d2.html