Earlier this semester, I wrote this brief analysis about Senator Blumenthal trending on Twitter. In the analysis, I draw on intertextuality (Kristeva, 1986) and Bauman’s (2004) notion of entextualization which captures intertextuality as a dynamic process. Through these frameworks, I was demonstrating to the class how misinformation (and disinformation – i.e. the intentional spread of false information) occurs on Twitter.
In September, I came across this tweet by Eric Morrow (@morroweric) from Buzzfeed News. The tweet (screen captured below) includes a video of a hearing conducted by the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The specific hearing is entitled Protecting Kids Online: Facebook, Instagram and Mental Health Harms and was held Thursday (September 30, 2021). Broadly, purpose of a hearing is “to obtain information and opinions on proposed legislation, conduct an investigation, or evaluate/oversee the activities of a government department or the implementation of a Federal law.” Congressional hearings are conducted by the house, senate, joint, or special committee. They’re open to the public so anyone can watch.
In the tweeted video, we have Sen. Blumenthal asking Facebook’s global head of security, Antigone Davis, if Facebook will commit to ending Finsta. For those unaware – finsta means “fake instagram” and usually consists of the user’s more candid life. This is akin to Goffman’s (1959) concept of back stage expression of self. In contrast, user’s can also have a front stage instagram account known as a rinsta meaning “real instagram.” These are often curated and created for parents, family, etc.
While skimming through the responses (most of which disparaged the Senator for being uninformed), I came across this tweet (see below) from “Cody the Copy Editor (@SirGramarye). Here, Cody challenges the accuracy of the original tweet and presents a video clip (via a quote tweet) that shows Blumenthal defining what Finsta is.
To elucidate what’s going on here, I draw on Kristeva’s (1986) notion of intertextuality and Bakhtin’s (1986) notion of dialogicality. Kristeva’s conceptualization of intertextuality draws on Bakhtin’s notion of dialogicality where “any concrete utterance is a link in a chain of speech communications” (p. 91). Kristeva expands on this notion in her concept of intertextuality which infers that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another” (p. 37). Indeed, and Bauman (2004) captures this process of intertextuality in his notion of “entextualization” where every utterance or text has the potential to be “decontextualized.” Put simply – when text (i.e. an utterance, tweet, or even a video) is captured (entextualized), it is “decontextualized” (taken out of context) and often made to be “recontextualized” for some purpose. This recontextualization point is important because it is often all that we see when doom scrolling twitter.
In the original tweet above, that purpose emerges through the shortened clip which frames Blumenthal as an “uninformed boomer” that evinces why we need term limits. Watching the video, we can observe how Davis navigates responding to Blumenthal, suggesting the strong disconnect between his understanding of Finsta and how Finstas are used by younger generations.
In contrast, the second tweet presents more context to the question by Blumenthal. In the second video, Blumenthal provides (arguably) an accurate definition of Finsta with the presupposition that Facebook has embraced Finstas as a serendipitous social phenomenon into their business model. This, I would argue, is what Blumenthal negatively evaluates/criticizes Facebook for. I think watching a full version of Blumenthal’s question and response, we would see that maybe the final question was worded sloppily. Or, that Davis strategically avoided responding to the presupposition in Blumenthal’s inquiry which reinforced the “strong boomer vibes.”
If I were super interested in examining how this question was “taken up” elsewhere – I might l also explore how different news outlets discuss the hearing. Outside of this example, I think that the notion of entextualization is a useful theoretical framework in identifying how misinformation is spread – or even how disinformation is created and spread on platforms like Twitter.
References
Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Eds.; V. McGee, Trans.). University of Texas Press.
Bauman, R. (2004). A world of others’ words: Cross-cultural perspectives on intertextuality. Blackwell.
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books.
Kristeva, J. (1986). The Kristeva reader (T. Moi, Ed.). Basil Blackwell.
