By Carrie Sickmann Han, Indiana University Charles Dickens’s novels might actually go on forever, not only as immortal works of literature, but as infinitely continuable fictions, thanks in part to tweets like the one above. It’s a familiar fact that the digital humanities supply us with new methodological tools and reading platforms, but these technologies also produce a seemingly inexhaustible, living archive of neo-Victorian fictions that reposition us as co-authors of beloved Victorian novels. Twitter isn’t only “like” a Dickens
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The Historian’s Toolkit: Social Media and Social Networking
Naomi Lloyd-Jones In January, I wrote a piece for this journal on how to be a #socialmediahistorian. Reflecting on an event organised by the Institute of Historical Research and the Social Media Knowledge Exchange, I concluded that the academic community is now less an ‘old boy’s network’, and is instead fast becoming a social network. So when it came to brainstorming potential keynote speakers for the then upcoming University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and King’s College London Workshop on
Read moreHow to be a #socialmediahistorian: plug in and plog on
By Naomi Lloyd-Jones (King’s College London) The proliferation of that previously innocuous little symbol, the dear sweet hashtag, raises a big question for today’s historians. How do we build our networks and communicate with others in our profession, while simultaneously disseminating our research to a wider audience, in a world increasingly dominated by the use of social media? Seeking to answer this conundrum opens up a veritable Pandora’s Box and forces us to think about how far we are willing
Read moreTweeting It Up @ #bavs2012
By Jo Taylor It is the first evening at BAVS 2012 (@VictorianValues). Delegates lounge around the bar at The Edge, our venue at Sheffield University, discussing such critical matters of Victorianist interest as William Morris’s relationship to bubble-wrap, the various ‘funny Victorians’ Tumblr pages, and the benefits of ice cream provision. In a dark corner, a table is surrounded by silent academics, lit only be an eerie glow from beneath. The sparse light falls on fast-moving fingers and slightly glazed
Read moreA Year on Social Media Part 1: Twitter
August bank holiday marked an important milestone for me. It was a year ago that my friends David and Jamie persuaded me that I needed to join Twitter. Of course, I knew about Twitter but was at the time rather dismissive of it. I thought only people like Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown tweeted. When my mother asked me ‘Why aren’t you on Twitter?’ I replied with smug confidence that ‘Twitter isn’t really used by people of my generation; it’s
Read moreTwitter in a Higher Education Classroom: An Assessment
Adeline Koh “Okay, everyone, now I want you to take out your phones or laptops and log on to Twitter.” My students gazed at me wide-eyed as I said those words last semester. One of them started laughing, saying, “Man, I never thought I’d hear a professor saying that.” Social media is often decried as one of society’s new ills. Many condemn social media for creating a “distracted” generation, one with gnat-sized attention spans, and make heartfelt appeals for a
Read moreThe Tweets of BAVS2012
#BAVS2012 has come to a close and soon the hash tag will be no more. For those of us who are on twitter we will no longer be scrolling through the tweets wondering what people are hearing or have heard. For those of you who might not have attended the BAVS conference but use twitter their might be feeling of relief that all mention of BAVS2012 will shortly be over and that threads will return to normal. Of course, you
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