TWITTER STORMS

WHAT IS A TWITTER STORM?

Twitter storms are described to be a ‘sudden peak in activity around a specific topic’. These ‘storms’ represent a topic that is either very popular or is being discussed around twitter by many users.

‘Hashtags’ are a cause of this where information is allowed to be collected and stored into statistics that expose to the world of twitter what people are talking about and are most interested about at that time of day.  According to a research report by Precise, ‘2011- the year of the perfect twitter storm’ there are three different types of ‘twitter storm’ on the internet.

PERFECT TWITTER STORM?

The ideal ‘twitter storm’ is a story that starts on Twitter and through a feedback loop with traditional press generates a significant amount of attention across a comprehensive audience. The second type is named ‘the storm in a teacup’. This is a story that generates a moderately small amount of interest on Twitter but is picked up by a great number of mainstream media outlets. The third type of ‘twitter storm’ is the twitter only storm. This is essentially a story that sparks a significant amount of messages and attention on twitter itself but receives no interest from mainstream media sources. An example of this is when the boy band One Direction’s singer Harry Styles lost his sunglasses and there was vast teenage search to find them. As there is a gigantic fan base for him and the band on twitter, this appealed to them however it would not be classed as news for the mainstream, as it is catered to a niche audience. 

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A strong example of a twitter storm in its purest form is the Topman t-shirt slogan controversy. The high streets male clothing shop Topman began selling t-shirts with the slogans “Nice New Girlfriend. What Breed is She?” and various others as the journalist Rubin at stylecaster.com describes as ‘demeaning to women and make light of domestic violence. These slogans resulted in a twitter outrage where people everywhere were voicing their opinions on the matter and creating major awareness for the debatable issue. Rubin went onto write in her article that ‘Outraged consumers and Topman supporters alike took to the social media stage to voice their opinions. Tweets such as Guardian‘s Life & Style’s, which reads “What was Topman thinking with these T-shirts” flooded the internet, causing Topman to recall the shirts and issue a public statement acknowledging the wave of negative feedback and apologizing for the offensive slogans.’ The influence that twitter had over this controversial subject, proves that it is in fact an extremely powerful source within cultural issues and important matters and the power it has is extremely quick and widespread.


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An example of a mass twitter storm is the most retweeted (passed on) photo on twitter. US President Barack Obama posted an image back in 2012 of him hugging his wife after winning another term as president. Within 24 hours the post had been retweeted more than 771,635 times, making it the most widespread social-networking message in this time frame. However, in 2014, Ellen DeGeneres posted a ‘selfie’ of her and various celebrities at the 86^th Oscars. This image went completely viral and took over the title of most retweets, receiving ‘779,295 retweets in approximately half an hour’ (The Guardian).

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