Saturday, September 10, 2011

No to twagarism!


Twittiquette requires Twitter users to credit the original authors of the tweets they copy or quote, lest they be accused of - wait for it - twagarism.

Twitter itself provides users with a way to credit properly with a Retweet button that allows you to display the actual tweet you want to retweet without having to copy-paste the whole thing and prefix it with "RT" and the originator's handle. Some still do it the old-school way, though, just so they could insert their own thoughts or reactions. Unfortunately, some don't cite the originators at all and try to pass the tweets off as their own. Hence the term "twagarism," which isn't an actual felony or a crime, and which, as Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume has described it, "certainly sounds less serious than plagiarism."


Dhume was recently "victimized" by twagarism, when Miss Universe contestant Vasuki Sunkavalli was discovered to have tweeted an earlier tweet of his without attribution. Sunkavalli didn't deny the act, but said that she didn't know "the technical know how [sic] of retweeting."

According to the article, Dhume later "retracted his accusation of deliberate intellectual theft" and said elsewhere that twagarism should be taken less seriously than plagarism, explaining that "the twitterverse is much smaller than the universe and that we should keep a sense of humor about it."

My take on it: Besides being overwhelmed by number of words that have spawned because of Twitter (and its 100 million active users), I'm only a bit bothered by the existence of twitizens who don't retweet properly because, while I know the bottom line has to do with respect for intellectual property [plus the idea that one doesn't really need to go through an etiquette manual to know that sources have to be cited], I also agree with what Dhume said about keeping a sense of humor about it. That, and I'm actually more annoyed with users who suffer a bad case of twitterhea.


#12 - Somayyah Abdullah
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