Shen !

Natalie Shen


Professor Bocchino

Writing 2 WP3


8 December 2019

How does Twitter BBC inform Tweet the World of a Research Paper?

With the development of the network, an increasing number of people like to read and

get information online. In this way, online applications like Instagram and Twitter become

more and more popular but papery paper-made mediums like newspapers are gradually

forgotten by the public. Because of the fast-paced life today, the news online has developed a

style that can easily attract lots of online users. This genre has a more brief length than the

primary text itself, a more extracted content than the research paper, and more attractive

words than the other academic materials because of their different its specialized structures,

audience, purpose, and author. In this way, Even the primary context is a research paper, the

twitters can translate them online readers used to pay attention to the a piece of brief news

and let the audience know the important content things in a short time. How does a publisher

tweet with such genre conventions from a long and complicated research paper? Let’s figure

it out by transforming a part of the paper, “Driving a Fishery along the Bumpy Ride of

Today's Globalization: The Case of the Australian Southern Rock Lobster Association,”1 to a

tweet of BBC step by step.

Firstly, we should pay attention to their different lengths and structures. For the

primary text, it is a twenty-page long research paper about a financial case and it has a

1D.,Dentoni, J., Lu, F., English, and R., McBride, “Driving a Fishery along the Bumpy Ride of
Today's Globalisation: The Case of the Australian Southern Rock Lobster Association,” International
Food and Agribusiness Management Review 15, no. 4 (2012): 157-76.
 Shen !2

complete structure, including the title, authors, abstract, introduction, main body with

headings, acknowledgments, references, and appendix. Because the research paper usually

does not have a length limitation, the authors can put everything they think necessary into it

and write anything important in detail. In this way, the research paper can make sure that it

has a good structure with detailed content and the readers can find any information they want

successfully. However, different from a research paper, a tweet usually has a word limitation

of 250 characters and the publisher can not type as many words as he or she wants. Also, if

the length of a tweet is too much longer, the online audiences online are not willing to spend

a lot of time on it because they prefer the shorter and clearer information. What’s more, a

tweet usually only has the main body content with its publisher and published time on the top

only. In this case, I want to transform the introduction part of the research paper into a tweet.

which It describes the background of the case and tells us how Matthew and his team

members are going plans to improve the bad situation of the lobster market. To make sure of

its short length and attractiveness, I must delete the unimportant information, including like

too much description of the background, explanation of principle, and reform them the

passage through changing the structure and content. In this way, I must will extract the main

argument or and idea of the paper to make sure that the audience on twitter can get important

information as quickly as they can. Just like what Karen Rosenberg writes in “Reading

Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources,” “Figuring out the main argument is the

key to reading the text effectively and efficiently,”2 making the audience see the main

argument helps them to read and catch the information more quickly. In this way, I must will

2Karen. Rosenberg, Karen. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources,” Writing
Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 6, Parlor Press, 2010, 63-70.
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extract the main argument or and idea of the paper to make sure that the audience on twitter

can get important information as quickly as they can.

Besides the length and structure, we need to focus on their different audiences and

purposes. According to the research paper, that “This case was prepared for class

discussion,”3 its audience is only the students who learn economics and other economic

scholars. Describing the solution to a crisis in the lobster market, its the paper’s purpose is to

encourage the students to think about better strategies for a real financial case and discover

better strategies for the great potential in the lobster market. However, for a tweet’s , its

audience is not only the people who learn economics but the whole public in the whole

world. Everyone Most people will care about the world economy because money is related to

themselves. The tweet wants the public to pay attention to that event and let as many as

people know it to increase the event’s its influence. At the same time, to make sure of its

attractiveness, twitter sometimes begins with a question to make people think about it. For

example, Market Mad House, a user on Twitter, published that in a Twitter post on November

21, 2019, Market Mad House (@MarketMadHouse) wrote, “Can IBM Survive?”4 as its

beginning. Also, it tweets wants people to evaluate the event and leave their opinions or

recommendations. In this way, to create a good tweet, I should write it in the easiest way to

make everyone can understand it and write it like an argument or a question to make it

controversial. In this way, more people will to pay attention to it and discuss it.

One of the most significant differences between a research paper and a tweet is their

writing style. Despite the unique beginning, they use different ways to inform the audience

3Dentoniet al., “Driving a Fishery along the Bumpy Ride of Today's Globalisation,” 169.
4Market Mad House, Twitter post, November 21, 2019, 1:41p.m., https://twitter.com/
marketmadhouse/status/1197631229647998977.
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and use distinct rhetorical devices and terminologies. Firstly, in the research paper, it lists the

three key points of Matthew in detail and describes them with reasons. However, in a tweet,

the audiences do not want to know the explanation for their theory or opinions, but they

wander want to know the most important cause, result, and the influence on them. To

translate it, I will focus on the event’s influence on the world economy that makes the

audience feel worried about their economy.

Secondly, the research paper utilizes a lot of data from authoritative organizations to

increase their its credibility. Also, it cites several sentences from Matthew to show his

confidence in the future market. Otherwise, in a tweet, data is common and even more

important than its use in a research paper because it can show the situation directly.

Moreover, because of the limitation of characters, quotations sometimes take too many

spaces but numbers do not. For example, in a tweet written by Darin LaHood, he lists in a

Twitter post on November 21, 2019, Darin LaHood (@RepLaHood) wrote, “Add 180,000

jobs” and “Boost US GDP by $70 billion” 5 to show the advantages of USMCA. In this way,

to create a good tweet, I will extract the data from the primary content to make it more

attractive to the public.

Thirdly, the research paper utilizes the name of some organizations and some jargon

with explanations to increase its authority and credibility. For example, Dentoni says “The

SRL association was funded for research projects by the Fishery Research and Development

Corporation (FRDC) and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

(DAFF)...markets”6 to describe the background of these organizations. However, in a tweet, it

5 Darin LaHood, Twitter post, November 21, 2019, 12:02 p.m., https://twitter.com/replahood/status/
1197606103611322369
6 Dentoni et al., “Driving a Fishery along the Bumpy Ride of Today's Globalization,” 162
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is rare to see a jargon or even a word that is hard to understand. Because the tweets are

toward to the whole public, the publisher wants everyone to understand it easily and discuss it

freely. Otherwise, nobody is willing to read an article that is hard to understand. According to

Ann M. Johns—the writer of “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice”—it will

take the audience a long time to read an unfamiliar language because they need “understand

some of the basic conventions, concepts, and values of a community’s genres.”7 In this way, I

will translate the jargon and hard words in the paper into common words and delete the

unnecessary names of organizations to make sure my audience can read it.

After all, different authors also make tweets have their own genre conventions that are

different from each other. If the publisher is a common citizen, he or she will write a tweet

freely with their styles and opinions and a few people will see the tweet. However, if the

publisher is a public figure, like the president or a movie star, they usually write tweets

carefully and comprehensively to make sure they make no mistake. Because a lot of people

will pay attention to their tweets, they will be responsible for everything they write down. In

this case, I am going to write a BBC tweet, which is an authoritative news publisher. As a

result, I need to make sure there are no grammar mistakes or odd words in it because many

people will read it. Also, I should translate the content carefully and check there is no wrong

information published about the event.

Transforming a research paper to a tweet, I realize so many differences between the

two genres and discover how distinct genres use their special conventions to inform others

about the same event. From an unlimited length to a limited length, the tweet informs the

7Ann, M. Johns, Ann, M. “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice,” Writing Spaces:
Readings on Writing, vol. 7, Parlor Press, 2010, 51-62.
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public in its brief sentences. From detailed content to extract information, the tweets select

the keywords of the event for the public. From professional style to easy-to-understand

language, the tweets enable everyone in the world to know what happened around us.

Research paper always helps scholars to discover new things but tweet makes everyone in the

world know about the key points in that paper. Analyzing the two genres’ conventions help us

to understand their uses and purposes better.

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Work Cited

Dentoni, D., J. Lu, J., F.English, F., R.and McBride, R. “Driving a Fishery along the Bumpy

Ride of Today's Globalisation: The Case of the Australian Southern Rock Lobster

Association,” International Food and Agribusiness Management Review 15, no. 4

(2012): 157-76.


Rosenberg Karen, Rosenberg. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources,”

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 6, Parlor Press, 2010, 63-70.


Johns. Ann, M., Johns. “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice,” Writing

Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 7, Parlor Press, 2010, 51-62.