Why is that certain news organizations ('m looking at you, CNN) quote Tweets word for word and then feel it necessary to post an image of the Tweet right under it? Often many Tweets in the same article. Quote, image. Quote, image. What is the point? One or the other would be fine, if its really necessary to report these inane posts.
I’m guessing that not all formats with faithfully display the tweet in context, so they quote the whole thing in plain text to make sure it gets delivered. If the tweet is faithfully displayed, you can click through to see the context and responses, but if not you still get the full story. Typically what I see is not just an image of a tweet, but an inline display of the tweet, that you can click thru.
Somewhere along the line, someone decided that tweets count as news. I can see reporting it if a presidential candidate tweets “Australians are dirty dog-people” or something but there’s far too many “news” articles along the lines of “Here’s six meaningless people who wrote a tweet about something so I guess this is a big event or something”. You know, the “People took to Twitter to discuss…” articles where you then get to read the thoughts of @ponytiger77 when she says “I luv australans & canddiate is a turd!! #australians4ever #turdsnever”
I guess it’s faster and cheaper than reporting on real news.
It’s also proof of the tweet if it gets deleted.
Embedded Tweets add a whole new “online exclusive” aspect to the story, as **Telemark **said.
Sometimes too the embedded Tweets don’t show up because of a communication problem between Twitter and the browser, or even some sort of block (like a company firewall).
Also if they have images of the tweets, they might not show up for whatever reason, too.
So when part of the actual text of your article is the text of the tweets you are talking about, it would really really suck if the tweet wasn’t there due to some malfunction. Better to put the text.
If you don’t show the actual tweet, it’s not as credible.
Annoying, yes, but I think it’s unavoidable.
I’ve been seeing this a lot lately. What is the point of deleting a tweet? It still lasts forever.
You may have observed that news shows nearly always show the text of something they’re quoting. Even when it’s a speech, or when they’re taking a comment from a radio show. It’s not like they’re singling out tweets.
The reasons are probably two-fold. The text allows the TV viewer to follow along to make the content clear. And in many public venues, the TV sound is turned off or can’t be heard. Putting up text allows people to follow along.
Inlining a tweet poses a slight risk to the news org. The person posting the original tweet can’t change the text of the tweet, of course, but they can change their display name so that CNN, say, now has a page with an inline tweet from disgruntled twitter user FUCK CNN!!!