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1. Good discussion of live-tweeting; ultimately reveals 2 different ways of thinking about what a conference is for @jnthnwwlsn/763677440350662656
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2. Is a conference for professionals to swap “works in progress” among themselves alone? Or to bring scholarship into the public sphere?
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3. No question that “live tweeting” is a practice that sees conferences as opportunity to make scholarship more open & public.
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4. (And it’s not live tweeting alone that “opens” conferences up: most conferences are already open to the public, though with a fee.)
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5. I tweet at conferences as a way to show the public great & relevant work being done by historians & colleagues ...
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6. … and also partly to encourage colleagues to show themselves and their work more often to the public.
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7. In that sense, there’s no denying live-tweeting is an attempt to steer professional norms in a particular direction.
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8. But staring at papers read aloud is as much a result of a movement to shape scholarly norms as staring at screens #EverythingHasAHistory
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9. Some friction over live-tweeting is inevitable insofar as it represents a debate over what scholars do, where scholarship should be.
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10. To say “I’m for more public scholarship” isn’t to deny utility of “works-in-progress” private workshopping among professional circle.
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11. But there are many spaces for that kind of workshopping in the profession & many norms around them; fewer spaces & norms for public work
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12. Conferences have always had one foot in public, one in private; live-tweeting is a way to encourage scholars to jump in w/ both feet.