Shen !

Natalie Shen


Professor Bocchino

Writing 2 WP3


8 December 2019

How does BBC Tweet the World of a Research Paper?

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

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

and more popular but 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 brief length extracted content, and more

attractive words because of its specialized structures, audience, purpose, and author. Even the

primary context is a research paper, the twitters can translate them to a piece of brief news

and let the audience know the important 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

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

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

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

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 long, the 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 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. It describes the

background of the case and tells us how Matthew plans to improve the bad situation of the

lobster market. To make sure of its short length, I must delete the unimportant information,

like too much description of the background and reform the passage through changing the

structure. 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 will extract the main argument 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, “This case was prepared for class discussion,”3 its

2Karen. Rosenberg, “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources,” Writing Spaces:
Readings on Writing, vol. 6, Parlor Press, 2010, 63-70.

3Dentoni et al., “Driving a Fishery along the Bumpy Ride of Today's Globalisation,” 169.
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audience is only the students who learn economics and other economic scholars. Describing

the solution to a crisis in the lobster market, the paper’s purpose is to encourage the students

to think about better strategies for a real financial case and discover the great potential in the

lobster market. However, a tweet’s audience is not only the people who learn economics but

the whole public in the whole world. 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 to

increase 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, in a Twitter post on

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

as its beginning. Also, tweets want 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

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 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.

4Market Mad House, Twitter post, November 21, 2019, 1:41p.m., https://twitter.com/
marketmadhouse/status/1197631229647998977.
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Secondly, the research paper utilizes a lot of data from authoritative organizations to

increase 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 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 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 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

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

7 Ann, M. Johns, “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice,” Writing Spaces: Readings

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

 Shen !5

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

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, 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.


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

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


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

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