On the 7th of August, Elon musk posted a tweet which cost him 20 million dollars and his position as Chairman from his company Tesla. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Musk of fraud over the tweets in which he claimed he has secured funding for taking his company, Tesla, private. This was seen as misleading to his investors as no funds for this plan were in Musk’s possession.
With almost 23 millions followers on twitter ( As of 28th September, 2018 ) , Elon Musk has an exponentially wide reach, be it his consumers or the general public. Every retweet or like made by him directly represents his and his company’s views. A term like spreadable media would be very relevant in this situation. Spreadability is basically the wide circulation and distribution of information on different media platforms.
As Musk tweeted that he was considering taking the company private, their stocks surged roughly 10%. This tweet is a perfect example of participatory culture, as the public actively engaged with Elon Musk’s tweet and made investments which they believed to be profitable for themselves.
I believe there could be a case of Denotation vs. connotation involved in this miscommunicated tweet. “I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving. This is why I referred to ‘funding secured’ in the August 7th announcement.” Said Elon Musk in a company statement. Denotation simply translates to the dictionary meaning of a word or phrase, whereas, a connotation is an implied meaning. Majority of the people, after reading the tweet, believed that Musk was denoting the funds were secure, however this was hardly the case. This could perhaps be one of the reasons that a single tweet turned into a nightmare for Musk.
It is now an undeniable fact that this particular tweet by Elon Musk has gone viral as it has amassed over 100,000 interactions by twitter users in just under a month. Despite this massive setback, Elon musk has found a way to keep himself and his employees positive and motivated by sending them words of encouragement to focus on the upcoming financial year.
CITATIONS:
- https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-taking-tesla-private?redirect=no
- https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-explains-funding-secured-tweet-2018-8
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/business/tesla-musk-sec-settlement.html
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-braces-for-uncertainty-amid-shift-in-musks-role-1538352138