Twitter as a New Fourth Estate: A Case of Black Twitter, Trolling vs. Accountability

Abstract

Globally, the emergence of social media particularly Twitter as a platform for social discourse has been well documented. Arguably, Twitter is an extension of mass media as the modern fourth estate. The fourth estate refers to the watchdog role of the mass media. Generally, mass media are used to ensure that government officials are held accountable by the public as the ideal fourth arm of the state. Thus, Twitter has afforded the public direct access to government officials. Twitter as a micro-blogging site is often used to challenge the government's lack of service delivery among other purposes. Accordingly, this investigation explores Twitter as a new fourth estate in South Africa. This qualitative inquiry used the online observation method to collect data from the relevant tweets, retweets, and comments as generated by the tweeps. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to analyse data. Furthermore, Nick Couldry's practice theory is the apt theoretical lens in this paper. This theory accentuates the manner in which the public uses new media rather than how the latter takes advantage of the former. The findings of the study suggest that Twitter is in a better position to topple mass media as a modern fourth estate in South Africa. According to the online observations undertaken in this research, the government officials are worried about their projected image on Twitter. Therefore, the study recommends that the public should capitalise on Twitter to ensure that government officials are held accountable. Similarly, government officials should effectively use this platform to answer the public's probing questions about the activities of the state. The government officials should see the messages communicated through Twitter as part of transparency and accountability. The tweets as generated by the public directed to the government officials are not always meant to troll the officials, some of them are intended to stimulate accountability on the side of the government. Moreover, the mass media outlets should embrace Twitter as an alternative fourth estate