It’s no secret that many people have stopped using X (formerly Twitter) since Elon Musk bought the social platform in April 2022. Whilst other similar social platforms fought to take the spot of the once beloved social media, such as BlueSky, Pebble and Threads, very few have managed to break into the limelight.
Quite such a quick and spectacular downfall of any social media site is a difficult watch but there’s actually a much more worrying element that the demise of Twitter brings with it.
Twitter was one of the first platforms to allow freelance and independent journalists to get their stories out to the masses quickly and efficiently, without needing to wait for a publication to pick up the story or needing to cater to a specific audience.
Unlike the already existing blogs, it had larger reach through the retweet function added in 2009, and it required little formatting, meaning journalists could quickly and effectively get their stories out.
The problem with the loss of independent journalism through the death of Twitter is that journalists will once again have to adhere to the ‘rules’ of a major publication if they want to be able to work in the field, or resort to less effective social platforms for their independent journalism. One of the key examples of this is investigative journalism.
With Twitter, investigative journalists didn’t have the issue of needing a publication to pick up their story in order to expose injustices in society. Gone were the days of having an important and critical story that you couldn’t break because certain publications didn’t want to be the ones to blow the whistle.
The question remains that until we see a truly triumphant replacement for Twitter, will there be a space for independent journalism within social media spheres.
NB: we have referred to X as Twitter when speaking about past use of the platform, before it was renamed.