Verrückte „Geschichte[n]“ in 280 Zeichen?

Abstract

The waves of attention that rise on Twitter and then recede again after a short time do not stop at historical topics, quite the opposite. The daily topicality of the short news service allows a look at the past again and again, provided that its reference to the present lends itself to this. The fact that this usually remains implicit is due to the conciseness of the tweets: A maximum of 280 characters simply makes more complex classifications, comparisons or interpretations impossible. Instead, users who want to draw attention to the historical dimensions of current events and reach a large audience at the same time must limit themselves to well-versed impulses. Their recipients are responsible for their appropriation and thus also control over the network, which they spin around well-placed tweets with the help of different tweet types. On Twitter, thousands of users negotiate their respective ideas of the past with each other in a way that is publicly visible. An incomparably greater number are subsequently confronted with these communications and appropriate them just as arbitrarily. A short message service whose relevance to the present could not be greater thus generates countless conversations about yesterday every day.