Blog 5: Conclusion
Introduction
My final blog post, bringing this series of blogs to a close is my conclusion. This post will be discussing the ideas and final thoughts surrounding the previous posts, discussing the research project conducted and relevant theories including, Habermas’ ‘Public Sphere’ and Goffman’s ‘Presentation of Self’ as well as some concluding thoughts and remarks around social media influencers and their impact on wider society, focusing on Greta Thunberg and her astounding global impact, begging the question; how, and to what extent has social media enhanced Thunberg’s ability to create an influence?
Thunberg’s entire social media presence is aimed at educating and influencing people on their environmental impact, but this is her goal in life in general as well, always attending meetings and giving speeches as well as charity events that support her cause.
Research
A small research project conducted gave me a big insight to Thunberg’s Twitter use. Though the data collected was only the span of one week which is a very small portion since she has been a twitter user for a number of years, I feel it is mostly representative of her general twitter use, any week picked would have likely shown similar results, since the results I found were pretty much exactly what I had expected.
The most staggering piece of research found, not withing the research project was the increase in Twitter followers (TrackAnalytics, 2020).
As seen in the graph above, in the space of just 2 years, Thunberg’s follower count increased by 4 million. This is significant increase and only proves her influence and impact on the public. Twitter is not even her most followed social media account, with her Instagram having a following of over 10 million.
Goffman
Despite discussing Thunberg and how having Asperger’s may have an influence on her not using ‘masks’ on social media, there is far too much evidence to suggest that his theory is wrong or discredit it in any way. Based on most people that use social media and other influencers, his theory does add up. However, the study of Thunberg makes this theory even more interesting as it could be studied much further in relation to Asperger’s or other conditions, particularly on the autistic spectrum and how they may differ within this theory. It would be interesting to conduct further research on this, still using a social media point of view.
Drawing from the research conducted, I found that 69/70 tweets and retweets within that week of data were centred around the environment. Obviously, her home life or as Goffman would call “backstage”, would involve things that aren’t to do with the environment as she is still a normal teenager, attends school and spends time with friends and family. She is not hiding this behind another mask, she simply just shares it less on social media than the cause she is committed to helping and the reason she is on Twitter. For example, this Instagram post Thunberg shared shows a picture of her with her dogs with a simple caption ‘Home!’. Showing she is happy to be back at home with her dogs despite the work she has been doing while away from home.
Habermas
It is clear from the evidence provided that if social media were included within the definition of a ‘public sphere’, to which there is a lot of evidence to back this up despite Habermas himself having some doubts, then Greta Thunberg would very much be a contributing member to this, particularly politically.
The evidence provided does suggest to me, and hopefully the audience of this blog that social media is a realm of the ‘public sphere’, however it is much more inclusive in modern day society and in the digital era.
As mentioned, Thunberg is often the subject of a lot of internet ‘trolling’ and hate from many people due to them not liking her or agreeing with her cause, or in the case of some older men simply not liking her due to her age (see blog 3), meaning being a part of the public sphere could be difficult for her but clearly as shown again on blog 3 she is more than capable of handling bad press and often responds to hate with a witty comment.
For future work it would be interesting to conduct much more in-depth research stemming from this on how big Greta Thunberg’s social media impact was. Using a much larger range of tweets, bringing in other social media platforms and conducting qualitative and quantitative research using other users as well as Thunberg’s platforms.
References:
Greta Thunberg on Instagram: “Home!” (2018) Instagram. [Online] [Accessed on January 6 2021] https://www.instagram.com/p/B6K5-JxJ4uU/
Trackalytics (2018) Greta Thunberg | Twitter Statistics / Analytics | Trackalytics. Trackalytics. [Online] [Accessed on January 8 2021] https://www.trackalytics.com/twitter/profile/Gretathunberg/
