One of the most puzzling aspects of short-form social media to me is some journalists’ insistence that their retweeting of a thing does not necessarily mean they have endorsed said thing. I used to have a similar disclaimer at the top of my profile — mostly because other journalists were doing it — but I took it down once the logic (or lack thereof) of the statement started to dawn on me.
Why on earth would I retweet something if I didn’t either agree with it or want to lambaste it in some fashion?
Of course, here I’m thinking like one of the “common folk.” For most people, that’s exactly why they do bother retweeting something. They either want to share something that they like, or make fun of something that they didn’t like. But journalists can’t do that, because of their (our?) commitment to objectivity. They (we?) want to appear neutral to the general public, so when they retweet something for their followers to pay attention to, they aren’t saying they are agreeing with whatever it is that they just posted — but they aren’t saying they aren’t agreeing with it, either.
This is dependent on how professionally handled one’s Twitter feed is. If you look at mine, for instance, you’ll find the requisite neutered links and shares, but you’ll also find a disjointed, vulgar stream of consciousness detailing my problems, frustrations, likes and dislikes. I would be kidding everyone if I tried to claim that my account was bias-free or emotionless.
If you look at pretty much any journalist who works in the mainstream industry’s Twitter account on the other hand, it’s much more cut-and-dry. They try — and generally seem to succeed at — keeping their personalities off their timelines. If anything is coming through, it’s the idea that they want you to believe they are amiable, charitable, impartial people. And who’s to say that some — hell, most — of them aren’t in real life?
But despite their best efforts, a pattern can often be seen emerging from their “favorites” and “retweets” lists that show a bias, either for something or against something. It becomes clear, after watching someone do their thing for a while, that they secretly really do endorse certain viewpoints as expressed by tweets. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that — not at all — but it does make their disclaimer seem shallow.
Alright then, but what about follows?
This actively boggles my mind to think about. Unless we’re talking about the Twitter accounts of actual news organizations, whose employees might have a hodge-podge of different views, individual journalists claiming that “follows are not endorsements” are straight joking.
If someone says something funny and you follow them for it, you’ve endorsed them. If they say something interesting and you follow them for it, you’ve endorsed them. What you are saying by following someone who isn’t your friend in real life is that you find this random Internet person worth enough of your time to be invested — even partially — in what they have to say on a long-term basis, and that is literally endorsing them.
I’m willing to hear other arguments in this regard, but I feel like anything I get back from this will literally just succeed in blowing my mind further.