Towards a Generic Analysis of the Microblog (Based on a Study of Twitter)

Abstract

This article is an attempt to determine the place of microblogs, posted on Twitter, on the Internet or, more broadly in the multimedia genealogy. First, the service itself is presented and mechanisms of its functioning are described. Then its importance for society is mentioned. Furthermore, some crucial issues related to the theory of genres are presented and they constitute an essential introduction to the research methodology. The “guides” on the path of reflection and on the characteristics of microblogs are the “older siblings” of this form of expression: the Internet, journalistic and other genres, whose determinants have already been described. Such an order is matched against another one – the tradition of genres’ description in four aspects: structural, pragmatic, cognitive and stylistic.