Rupert Murdoch on Twitter
Recent interview with our social media management director Stewart Dawes by Farz Edraki of Crikey.com.au …
1. How would you assess Murdoch’s Twitter performance?
Love him or loathe him, Murdoch is one of the few people helping Twitter remain vaguely interesting. Twitter has become a dead platform for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people as the massive migration of focus onto Instagram and also sadly back to Facebook continues. Murdoch is using it true-to-type – old school editorialising where instead of full-column newspaper editorials, his key messages are reduced to just 140 characters. He’s giving us bite-size daily opinions perfect for our fast-food constitutions.
Murdoch’s tweeting seems like an extension of his thrill for greater engagement with people-at-large which I suspect was spurred by his TV performance in the phone-hacking scandal. Twitter gives the irascible, table-thumping Murdoch of that enquiry a means by which to ongoingly explain himself to the audience who chooses to regard him as relevant, even fascinating. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his parliamentary TV appearance was in 2011 and he started tweeting in 2012.
If he offends a few groups along the way, all the better for News Corp. It gives the corporation an edgy, human face and moves discussion ever-further away from 2011’s embarrassments.
What tips would you give him if he came to you for advice?
While it would be more pleasant for the twitterati if Murdoch engaged in conversation, like most celebrities he pretty well uses it for one-way expression only. Understandable as he would likely receive thousands of tweets directed at him daily. So there’s very little scope for him to change his broadcaster approach.
Overall my advice to Murdoch would be to not change at all. We’re getting this one-off glimpse of an influential 82-year-old tycoon, still working when most his age have passed away – an ever-more lonesome icon of the 20th Century having a last series of rages at the dimming of the light. His messy double spaces after fullstops, or spaces before commas add to the chaotic tone. What’s he going to tweet next? No idea, though it will be cantankerously right-of-centre.
Given the fact that Murdoch has rarely been the most loved of human beings, I’d hardly be advising him to bother being more loveable.
2. Murdoch’s quite open on Twitter. Does that help his personality and profile? Are there any associated risks?
It’s a great opportunity to show the public that behind the monolithic News Corp and Fox brands is a thinking, fearless human being who regards himself as a newspaper man first-and-foremost, and a commercial tyrant second. His profile was so poor after the News of the World scandal he could hardly make it worse, so bizarrely Twitter is helping him rehabilitate his public image prior to his passing from this world. Maybe we’ll remember him more for his tweeting than the ugly hackings done under his watch?
As for associated risks, some shareholders at News Corp probably have the occasional sleepless night, but overall Murdoch is using a cut and thrust approach to public discourse to both defend his realm, offer bouquets to those he supports, and stir newfound loathing against perceived adversaries. I don’t see any offended Scientologists, “BBC lefties”, Rudd sympathisers or Muslims bothering to throw a pie in his face, or worse finish him off, when they’re figuring nature will do the job for them eventually.
3. Are there other media personalities – who are also uninhibited – that you could compare Murdoch to?
Not for my mind. Murdoch is fascinating for a variety of reasons but the aspect that makes him most unique, sorry to return to the subject again, is surely his octogenarianism. There’s a much shorter time-frame that he’ll be tweeting for. The Murdoch-tweeting phenomenon has that one-off historical quality to it. Myspace was an out-of-the-box Murdoch train-wreck, Murdoch on Twitter is feeling like a train wreck in extreme slow motion.
4. Do you see Murdoch’s twitter use as signalling the rise of “tweetorialising”?
Twitter put tweetorialising in the hands of the everyday person so I don’t see that tweetorialising is on the rise thanks to Murdoch or anyone else. We mere mortals on twitter dreamt that our thoughts could be something more than random suburban blips, we dreamt of hordes of followers lapping up our latest opine. But it was all too democratic. The white noise became unbearable. Now the everyday Joe or Jo is leaning towards visual mediums like instagram to glorify our anonymous existences in visual form. It’s mostly just celebrities and journalists who are still locked in a mortal dance on Twitter, feeding off the radiance of each other. It’s a shame because Twitter was thrilling at its peak, but it’s extremely dead compared to what it once was. No wonder Twitter’s hurrying to the stock exchange to get what illusory value it can before the lustre falls away.
So to me Murdoch’s late-adopter use of Twitter is symptomatic of the decay of the platform, the gloss is coming off its 140-character limitation and the forgettable nature of the billions of ideas traded in its abridged space. Instagram and Facebook both provide a lot more room for narrative and we humans are returning to our love of a well-told tale.
