To tweet or not to tweet?

It’s a scant five years since Twitter, the brainchild of Jack Dorsey in California saw the light of day. An easy to access social media, Twitter now has an estimated 200 million devotees around the globe. Though this figure may be taken with a pinch of salt as the retention rate for users is unknown.

Despite criticism that it abets users’ narcissism, Twitter is credited, along with YouTube and Facebook, as playing a key role in the popular uprisings in the Arab Spring countries.The eventual “success” of these fledging revolutions remains in the balance. But whatever the outcome, Twitter must be regarded as more than mere venal navel gazing.

That aside, it has to be said that the overwhelming majority of the twitter world comprises of trivial musings that don’t go anywhere. Most of Twitter world musings are destined to forever remain in some kind of hermeneutically sealed cyber world.

But we shouldn’t get too carried away. Twitter can claim no credit for breaking the NOTW hacking scandal. That credit belongs to some old fashioned investigative journalism by Guardian journalist David Leigh. Recent revelations that Leigh himself appears to have resorted to phone hacking himself in 2006 however may muddy the ethics pool a little.

For some reason twitter, like a kind of electronic gavel, calls time on entries at 140 characters. Something to do with its SMS origins I gather. There’s little call for colons or semicolons which probably is a good thing. Longwinded sentences too are passé.

Yet on other forms of electronic media, politicians routinely repeat key words even entire sentences, ad nauseum. It seemed to work for our PM’spredecessor – for a while anyway. During the last election campaign Julia, to her credit, quickly realised that she needed to say something more substantial than our need to move forward. A simple no does it for Tony Abbott and he relies on his high visibility vests and hard hats to round off his 30 second sound bites: a kind of old fashioned belief that action speaks louder than words. Julia herself has been roundly criticised for failing to get her message across and for failing to sell the Govt’s carbon tax.

Maybe Twitter is on the money. It must have some appeal if 200 million people have elected to sign up. Tweeters are threatening to rain on Q&A panels’ parade. The punchy comments scrolling across the bottom of our television screens are often more erudite (though not always) and to the point than a long winded panellist.

As we consume the daily news on our electronic devices, our fingers are poised to scroll on down if the text contains too much waffle. We simply do not want to be hectored or lectured. God knows we’ve been subjected to enough of that in our formative years. I suspect it was this tendency by John Howard (and not Maxine McKew – remember her?) that contributed to his ignominious demise.

Twitter is announcing its presence in all sorts of scenarios. From spuriously enlightening us about the goings on in the texting mind of Shane Warne to the more serious daily machinations in the house on the hill in Canberra. In 2007 Joe Hockey canvassed the opinion of his online followers when he was deciding to have a tilt at becoming leader of the Libs. Tweeting too seems to have become a favoured outlet of Malcolm Turnbull in venting his spleen.

And yet some issues are complex and defy dumbing down. Carbon pricing and climate change demand time and patience to be fully understood. It’s an easier option to resort to vilifying those who seek to tackle these issues. But it’s difficult to see how twitter as a forum can do justice to such issues.

I daresay Gough would’ve got a guerensy on twitter – when on that day in 1974 he uttered those immortal words God Save the Queen, for nothing will save the Governor-General. Dorothy Parker too would have been a natural.

If nothing else, twitter is enabling us to reclaim the golden age of aphorism when Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw cast their lyrical prowess far and wide. Back in a time when there was no call to dumb down issues. Or even further back in time when the bard of Avon coined the phrase brevity is the soul of wit.

For many of us our time is scarce and precious. And anything that assists us to cut through the sound bite and political spin and enables us to navigate our way more efficiently through what passes for political debate has to be commended.

Oops that last sentence may have exceeded the 140 characters.

Twitter anyone?