For the Final Project I will be researching Walt Whitman’s presence in social media, specifically looking at Twitter. One of the major aspects Whitman is known for is being a poet who tried to encompass and connect with his poetry and consequently his readers. Whitman is often referred to as being a universal poet, or the quintessential American poet, because of the human connection he expounds upon in his poetry. In several of Whitman’s poems, such as “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” or “Song of Myself,” Whitman makes it clear that he feels it is up to the poet to give the connectivity between the poet and the reader spiritual meaning.
This universal, or even more narrowly, this American, reputation that Whitman earned himself, caused me to think about how Whitman would feel about the connectivity and shared network of our world today that exists thanks to the technological advances made since his time. While there are many forms of shared social media, Twitter is a platform that only allows users to express their thoughts via short prose. While I’m sure Walt would be highly intrigued by other forms of social media that focus mainly on photographs shared universally between people, Twitter is unique in that it is almost exclusively prose, which, Whitman as a poet, I feel, would be more interested in. Not only that, but Whitman himself has quite the presence on Twitter already, being quoted or referenced hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of times per day by different people all around the world.
In my research of Whitman’s influence and presence on Twitter I will be taking a traditional approach by writing a formal paper, which will reference several Whitman poems that discuss universality and connectedness, as well as including several Tweets by users who are influenced by Whitman and his ideas of connectivity in context to our modern age of shared thought. I hope to find a deeper understanding of Whitman’s impacts on our modern, technologically advanced world, and how his ideology has shaped our thinking, specifically in context to social media.
I really love the idea of looking at Whitman through the social media lense. It will be interesting to take something from the past (Whitman) and combine it with something from our present and future (social media). It’s obvious that Whitman’s influence is still so prevalent; you can always find some type of social media outlet (Instagram, Facebook, twitter, etc) that’s quoting him or referencing him. I’m curious to see how people’s understanding of him has somewhat transformed over the years and how that is portrayed through twitter.
I think that the idea of looking at Whitman’s impact of social media is a great idea. I can only image the about of Whitman quotes which caption pictures on Instagram and Twitter. I wonder also how often Whitman is also misquoted on various social media platforms. I’m excited to see where this project takes you! Like Emma Stein, I’m curious about the development of twitter users view of Whitman. I’m also curious about how the form of your final project will develop…maybe even transforming from a traditional research paper into something that has aspects of the web based platform that you’ll be looking at.
I really like this project idea! Whitman seems to maintain his universal and prolonged presence among us by appearing on social media. His voice is still heard today through platforms like this and perpetuates Whitman’s vision to a modern generation. I think it would be really interesting for you to check out how people engage with these Twitter accounts– what do they tweet back? Which ones have the most retweets? And so on. I’m excited to see how this turns out! It sounds like its going to be really interesting and very relatable.
I think we had a great conversation about this topic as we clarified the form it might take online, and how you might begin limiting and selecting your “data.” I suggested certain tweet-visualization tools (google the phrase–there’s a lot out there). You might also do some research to see how others have used and analyzed Twitter data to support arguments about anything from literature to politics. Seems like a very promising idea!