For our first assignment in our Digital Humanities module we had to write a Twitter essay or Twessay on openness with the rules that we had to use every single one of the 140 characters and had to have #DHUCCTwessay in the tweet somewhere. Twitter is a new experience for me and i have not used it before i started this module. So trying to construct an essay and put an argument forward in 140 characters seemed daunting.

Transparency of data is the key to empowering governments & citizens on a global scale #openbydefault #DHUCCTwessay https://t.co/XB0SY7zKlI

— Patrick O’Toole (@paddykoolster) October 15, 2015

However i found this exercise of less is more very helpful and made me think about words and the importance of them to get a point across. after i had wrote what i wanted to say in a normal sentence i then had to analyse each word and the sentence structure to get it down to fit in the tweet. I knew i didn’t want to use emojis or non proper english not that I’m completely against them but don’t like to use them personally. I had a link to an article and another hashtag i wanted to use also and had to account for them first before restructuring what i wanted to say. My essay was on how governments have to work together on making an open world for everyone in terms of data and information and how information should be open by default.

Think outside____ the box –> | info | and open it, | (plz | making info | pay) | accessible |_____| #sharingiscaring #DHUCCtwessay — Jadwiga P (@jadwiga_98) October 15, 2015

The Twessay format and the topic of openness work well together. I found that while being restricted to a certain amount you can say, it opened up a lot of ideas on how you can make your argument. My tweet had me looking at different readings, images, hashtags, phrases to use in my tweet and looking at how i could approach the twessay. Some of the other Twessays in the class were very interesting and unique. Jadwiga’s tweet i liked for her use of characters to make a box around the word info(please pay) and encourage people to think outside the box and open it. I think it describes very well and in a unique manner the way big corporations treat information by locking it up for only the rich to access.

#DHUCCtwessay #openness of information is the only way to insure a stronger future of education & understanding http://t.co/HT0MEzRbQC — eoin long (@eoinlong6) October 15, 2015

Another Twessay i liked was Eoin’s one on how you have to insure a stronger future of education through openness of information. The article he linked to his tweet was very interesting and explained how through using open source infrastructure a lot of services can be done at a fraction of the cost while bring down the price you have to pay for that service. Eoin’s Twessay was a similar structure to mine but i liked the content a lot and one thing he did was to use his #openness as a word in his sentence which is a good way of giving people access to more tweets on openness while thinking about your character count. In conclusion I really enjoyed the Twessay assignment and it opened up my way of thinking and approaching writing and i hope to use Twitter more on other projects to learn more fun ways of approaching writing.