Opinion – Twitter as an Orwellian Global Editor – E-International Relations

Twitter has been singled out by scholars studying the intersection of politics and cyberspace for its unmatched political momentum, amid other communication platforms. Consider for instance that as of 2020, 98% of the 193 UN member states had an active Twitter presence, represented by 163 heads of states and 136 Foreign Ministries (Twiplomacy 2020). So self-evident is the clustering of a digital international community on Twitter that identifying the absent few is a relatively easy task. For example, missing in 2020 were only four states, namely, Laos, North Korea, Sao Tome and Principe and Turkmenistan (Twiplomacy 2020). According to Marc Lynch (2011), the novelty of digital communication technologies lies in their construction of a new route to information sharing (Lynch 2011). By that, bypassing information producers, previously monopolized by large media corporations. To him, a voice in the information ecosphere is so critical that digital platforms are actually tools of political combat (Lynch 2011). Hence, it was access to these tools that enabled the carving out of a new public sphere, in an Arab context (Lynch 2007). Within the new digital environment, Twitter effectively occupies a unique sociopolitical position (Collins, DeWitt and LeFebvre 2019; Golbeck, Grimes and Rogers 2010; Lewandowsky, Jetter and Ecker 2020;
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