Tweeting into the Echo-Chamber (Or, The Oily Bird Gets the Worm… to Un-Apologize)

Law & Politics, Media & Advertising, Technology

(Audio courtesy of Deadwood.)

I’ve long been fascinated by the art of the apology, or in some instances, the spectacular lack thereof. Case in point: a couple of weeks ago, Texas Republican Congressperson Joe Barton notably apologized to the corporate heads of BP in the wake of White House pressure to secure from the company a $20 billion payback fund. Soon thereafter, he retracted that apology… then later retracted his retraction… and then I got bored following the story, so who even knows the apology’s status as of this writing? The  malum discordiae for such tone-deaf flip floppery? According to Steven Andrew’s Examiner article “How to Use Twitter to Make Friends and Influence People,” it had an awful lot to do with Twitter*:

Literally before the GOP leadership and the conservative media fully realized what Barton had said, much less had time to think about the consequences, Barton’s comments and the GOBP idea had already ripped through twitter like wildfire and the narrative was set. The Republican establishment, their clumsy Fox News and talk radio dinosaurs rendered useless, panicked and ran for the exits.

Now that the traditional rightwing echo chamber has been knocked back on its heels by this unanticipated blast of disruptive feedback, it’ll be interesting to see how the “tweet factor” is accounted for in the future… And if Barton will eventually retract the retraction of the retraction.

* And maybe a little of this, too.