China Scholars and Twitter

Jonathan Sullivan1 University of Nottingham Working Paper, March 2016

Introduction

It started with a chance discovery at a second hand book store—and ended with an appearance on the BBC’s Newshour and a New York Times feature. In October 2015 my PhD student came across a dusty old copy of Sue in Tibet, an obscure fictional tale of the adventures of an American missionary’s daughter in the Tibetan borderlands in the 1920s.

Delighted with her find, she posted a picture of the book on Twitter and within minutes received a message from Samanthi Dissanayake, Asia editor for the BBC News website. The two swapped emails and discussed the possibility of a piece based on the book. Over the next few weeks, my student delved into the author's background, finding missionary documents about the historical family online, and connecting (via Twitter) with a museum in the US that houses the artefacts the family collected while in Tibet. Through the museum she tracked down the author's family and uncovered the fascinating real life adventures of Dorris Shelton

Still which the book dramatizes. On March 17th the BBC published the resulting piece on their website, which quickly generated a buzz in the Twittersphere. A few hours after the piece was released, Dhruti Shah, a journalist at the BBC World Service, contacted her via

Twitter to request an interview, and an hour later she was on air talking to Newshour host

James Coomarasamy. On March 20th the New York Times featured the story as part of their

"Women in the World" series and my student had taken another step towards building a reputation as a young scholar-in-training to watch out for. Count this another victory for “the engine of creativity that is Twitter”, tweeted Dissanayake. This is a nice anecdote, and as

1 [email protected]

1 someone who started using Twitter as a PhD student I have similar stories myself, but is there more systematic evidence that Twitter is a useful tool for China scholars, particularly more junior colleagues? Situating external engagement within the broader context of UK Higher

Education (HE) and the technological developments that are changing many aspects of academic life, this note draws on the experiences of a larger number of China scholars active on Twitter to assess the merits of the medium for individuals and the field as whole.

External engagement and technology

External engagement and the dissemination of research beyond specialist academic outlets have increased in relevance in UK HE since “research impact” was codified by the Research

Excellence Framework (REF), which determines public funding for research at UK universities. The government argues that research funded by public money that fails to demonstrate its connections and utility to the world outside of academia has given rise to a

“relevance gap” that is untenable for the sector as a whole. “Deliverables” in the form of activities and outputs in the public domain are a feature if not obligation of public research funding in the UK and other western countries. Furthermore, among university administrators mindful of name recognition in the competition for student recruitment, the hope that academics will engage audiences and stakeholders outside of the academy has increasingly become an expectation. There are many voices within academia that bemoan the marginalization of “pure research” and the rise of administrative processes and structures designed to measure and manage academics’ activities. However, in the current context of budget cuts and political will for ensuring “accountability”, this is the system that academics in the UK and elsewhere have to operate in. In this environment, building a public profile and demonstrating the ability to engage externally is something, alongside developing research and teaching skills, that PhD scholars-in-training and Early Career Researchers (ECR) need

2 to consider. At the very least, demonstrating an acknowledgement of the importance of external engagement is a useful signal in a competitive job market. Yet, honing the skills needed to engage external stakeholders in business, government and the media is an area of postgraduate training that has traditionally been overlooked. Consequently, although many

China scholars would like to participate in public discourses within their fields of interest, many do not feel comfortable doing so (Sullivan, 2014). My argument in this paper is that the nature of the medium and the particular composition of the China-focused Twittersphere make Twitter a good starting place for PhD students and ECRs in China Studies to make connections and put their research into the public sphere.

Across the sector, integral components of academic life are being challenged and enhanced by technology. Conference conversations no longer have to wait for Q&A to begin but can happen all the time via social media backchannels. The latest issues of academic journals can be sent directly to smartphones. Social media is changing the way that academics work. There is a plethora of tools and platforms available for every stage of the research process.2 In different ways Google Scholar, RSS and Pinterest have changed how we find research and teaching materials. Mendeley, Academia.edu and ResearchGate have changed how papers are stored and shared. Skype, Dropbox and Google Docs have simplified remote collaboration. Social media tools have been adopted as means of scholarly communications and harnessed by Altmetrics to provide a fuller picture of the scientific and social impact of academic output. Making papers available on “pre-publication” repositories like SSRN, or on personal homepages, combined with a practical strategy for external engagement can increase the impact of an academic piece of work, increasing the tiny readership of paywall-bound traditional peer-reviewed articles (Remler 2014). And unlike

Virtual Learning Environments or professional listserves, which are a closed world, social

2 Andy Miah has compiled a comprehensive list of social media tools for scholars. Available at: http://www.andymiah.net/2012/12/30/the-a-to-z-of-social-media-for-academics/

3 media is transparent and anyone can participate. The question is not whether an academic should use these tools, but rather which platforms are the most effective and how many technologies can be managed without inundating the user (Whitworth 2009).

Twitter as an academic tool

Celebrating its tenth anniversary in March 2016, Twitter has shaken off its earlier image of celebrity stalking and inane ephemera (although it retains these functions for some users), and has become the tool of choice among many professionals working on China. Despite initial scepticism, many academics have recognized the utility of Twitter for various professional activities, including networking and increasing personal and research visibility, gathering and disseminating information (Lupton, 2014). There are numerous studies on academic uses of

Twitter in terms of teaching (Berk 2010; Junco 2012), increasing academic citations

(Eysenbach 2011; Priem and Heimmenger 2012), as an alternative measure of research impact (Priem, Pinnower and Heimmenger 2012), as a professional competency (Gruzd et al

2012), and a backchannel at conferences (Ross et al. 2011). Academics are using Twitter for describing academic practices, giving or seeking advice, critiquing academic culture, publicising publications and conferences, sharing thoughts on current events, and reflecting on teaching practice (Priem and Costello, 2010; Holmberg and Thelwall, 2014). Twitter is an easy and effective way to connect with a huge range of people with interest and expertise in

China from a wide variety of professional and experiential backgrounds. Although social media ties are famously weak (Gladwell, 2010), the low costs and horizontal informalities of

Twitter make it particularly appealing to junior academics who can easily access their senior counterparts (Lupton, 2014). It is easy to connect with other professionals interested in China, and to make contacts that can later develop into professional relationships or research collaborations. It is useful at all stages of research, from collecting materials for preliminary

4 literature reviews to post-publication promotion. In the words of Lewis and Rush social media “has a role in building the networks of practice which can underpin the development of learning professionals” (2013: 186). For University of Salford professor Andy Miah,

“deciding to opt out of social media is akin to opting out of email in the 1990s” (2013: np).

At least one scholar has written of the “transformation of scholarly practice” wrought by technological developments, and talks convincingly of the “digital scholar” (Weller 2011).

Durose and Tonkiss argue that “being conversant in these mediums is now an expected component of an academic profile” (2013: np), and there is a developing conversation about how academics’ proficiency with digital media should be encouraged and rewarded by institutions (Weller, 2011).

Using Twitter as a China scholar

While using Twitter is simple (Charpentier 2014; Mollett et al. 2011) getting the most out of it takes time. Finding “your voice” and building a network require demonstrating engagement through sustained activity. As Junco et al. argue, “Twitter is amenable to an ongoing, public dialogue” (2010: 120). I started using Twitter in February 2010 having just passed my viva and started a RCUK postdoc at the University of Nottingham. Like most early career researchers I attended conferences, but my networking efforts were tentative and the scale of my professional network was very limited. Although I had begun publishing and had secured a postdoc position, I worried my lack of name recognition and the lack of invitations to review manuscripts, write book chapters or attend workshops. Making contacts with scholars within the field of Chinese studies was a major motivation for me joining Twitter. I had the notion that Twitter would immediately insert me into an academic network, where intellectual exchanges would quickly lead to research collaborations and interesting invitations. It didn’t, and for a long time I merely lurked, following the conversations that

5 others were having. For a while, if anything, Twitter added to my sense of isolation, having become another site where things were passing me by. The key realisation for me came from watching how experienced academics like Jeff Wasserstrom and Taylor Fravel, and (then-)

PhD students like Maura Cunningham and Leta Hong Fincher were creating value through their Twitter feeds, sharing information and insights and giving people a reason to follow them. I started to share my thoughts on current events in China and sharing academic papers I thought were of interest. Gradually my network and “audience” expanded and the interactions and dialogue I had hoped for came with it (as did the invitations and visibility for my work).

Because Twitter requires users to share messages of 140 characters or less, it trains users to express sometimes complex ideas in a very succinct form—a skill that is useful for interactions with the media and “elevator pitches”. The word limit is nonetheless sufficient to make a concise point or comment on something you are sharing, and more nuanced points can be made over several linked tweets. Users can choose to follow the messages (tweets) of other people with accounts that they are interested in. Messages are displayed in reverse chronological order in the users’ timeline and anyone can search for messages on topics of interest in the public timeline (i.e. the record of all users’ messages). You can actively engage and inform by sharing your thoughts and information (i.e. Tweeting), or passively collect material or follow discussions (by following other users or topics or using the “like” button as a bookmark). Using Twitter as a means to receiving information is usually quicker and more diverse than academic email lists, and sometimes allows users to “be present” at momentous events like the siege of Wukan, where then-Telegraph correspondent Tweeted from behind the barricades. While this is a useful function, maximizing Twitter’s potential for building recognition for your specific area of expertise and forging networks requires sustained, active engagement. Providing something useful, especially if people can’t necessarily get the same

6 commodity elsewhere, is a very effective way of establishing your expertise and value to the

China watching Twittersphere. This can take the form of commentary on contemporary events, insights from your research, providing “inside information” relating to the research field or profession, or linking to material that is less obvious or more specialized (e.g. academic materials, particularly if it is open access, or lesser known blogs with different perspectives). One successful strategy that China scholars have employed is to establish a niche area of expertise. Naval War College professor Andrew Erickson, for instance, tweets on security concerns; University of Leeds historian Adam Cathcart has established himself as the go-to source for academic commentary and material on China-North Korea issues;

Cornell professor Nick Amundsen tweets on Chinese poetry and literature. This is not an argument for homogenizing your Twitter feed or sticking monotonously to a very narrow area of content and comment, which would remove a lot of the enjoyment of tweeting. But if you’re a China specialist, posting frequently about real ales or the football team you support sends mixed signals to your audience. Maybe you’ll attract a following of real ale enthusiasts, but that doesn’t help build your reputation or network in the China watching community.

Given that Twitter, like academia, is a crowded field with overlapping areas of expertise, establishing yourself as a reliable source on a particular area can be a very useful signal to followers and particularly journalists, who know where to come when something happens in your area.

Twitter is an “iterative game” and a Twitter network feeds on reciprocity. Retweeting news of others’ publications or bon mots (i.e. sharing them with your own followers) is a way to establish goodwill that may be reciprocated at a later stage. Sharing with and acknowledging other Tweeps is an easy way to create goodwill and concretize connections.

Trying to bring others into conversations you’re having is another effective way to increase your digital network. Linking people up, either those within or outside of your network is

7 both a service to the field and an effective way of growing your network. Sharing material, introducing people, noting the related work of others in a tweet about something else, giving credit for sharing links and attribution for ideas or comments are effective ways to add value.

It is also a way to reach out to people you don’t know and would like be connected to.

Twitter is informal, and it is very easy to communicate with people whom you might not so easily approach in the physical world. Re-tweeting such eminences’ tweets or actively engaging them by sending interesting things their way or mentioning their work is a good way to break the ice. All Twitter users must create a profile (a short biography, a photo and a username), and if you are using Twitter for professional purposes your profile should reflect that. The profile should be used to establish who you are, what you work on and your institutional affiliation, since it is the profile rather than the corpus of your historical tweets that potential followers and potential collaborators (journalists, other academics etc) will read.

Esoteric, minimalist or zany profiles are well and good if your name and reputation is already very well established, otherwise it is a good idea to provide sufficient information for people to know whether they want to follow/network with you. Avoid too many parochial tweets about subjects that are only relevant within a very small circle, e.g. directing comments to students of your classes, live tweeting departmental seminars and talks, frequently retweeting your university’s PR account, talking about local weather etc. A smattering of such tweets can give texture to a professional academic account, indeed Johnson argues that “a mixture of about 30% chatter and 70% content is the gold standard among brand and digital media people” (2012: np), but if the parameters of the experience you’re sharing are frequently restricted to your own institution, your network will likely be similarly circumscribed. It is important to resist the temptation to overdo self-promotion on Twitter.

This may sound redundant given that self-promotion is one of the major attractions and uses of a platform like Twitter, but it has to be used sparingly. RT-ing every tweet in which

8 someone says something nice about you or your book, or simply mentions you, quickly becomes irksome for your followers (eg one academic I follow once wrote, “thankful to reviewer that called my new book "superb" and "mesmerizing"”). Use the @reply function to thank someone directly for their endorsement or support, or simply liking a tweet in which you were positively mentioned (they will probably notice) as a goodwill gestures acknowledging the nod. An article, and especially a book, coming out in print is an occasion for celebration that everyone can empathize with. But only the author knows the blood, sweat and tears that went into its making, its importance on the job market etc, and are thus less likely to forgive obsessive tweeting about it. Resist the temptation to ‘become the book’ and tweet about it all the time, although linking the book to other things that you’re commenting on or linking to can be an effective workaround. New work is fertile territory for humble- bragging, and a balance has to be struck.

China studies and Twitter

There is a huge range of China-related people active on Twitter, from the Dalai Lama and Ai

Weiwei to the People’s Daily and the Editor of Global Times. Twitter is used as a platform outside the Firewall by a large number of Chinese intellectuals and activists (Sullivan, 2012).

There is a huge range of media devoted to China (Chinese and western), innumerable China correspondents, NGOs, businesspeople, students, policy analysts, expats etc.3 The academic field of China Studies is also well represented, with numerous journals like the China

Quarterly, China Information and Journal of Asian Studies, departments and institutes such as

Fairbank, SOAS and the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. There is also a significant number of China studies scholars active on Twitter, at all career stages including many PhD students. Major figures in the organization of China Studies in the UK, like Jane

3 I have curated lists of people in different sectors working on China, for example China correspondents. Following the list gives access to all of the tweets of those people, or users can select individuals from the list to follow. The lists are publicly available at http://bit.ly/1K5047l

Duckett, Michel Hockxx, Gerda Wielander and Sarah Dauncey are on Twitter. For the past three years I have been tracking the number and activities of China scholars on Twitter. The number is constantly growing; at time of writing there are nearly 300 China scholars

(including those who study contested parts thereof) and approaching 200 graduate students active on Twitter. This includes academics working across the field in many disciplines and focusing on many disparate aspects of China past and present. Table 1 shows the interests of

50 of the most active China scholars on Twitter.4

Table 1: China scholars on Twitter Name Field Name Field Andrew Quintman Religion David Tobin Identity Carla Nappi History Linda Yueh economy James Leibold Ethnicity Rogier Creemers Internet Jeff Wasserstrom History Jennifer Hsu Society Carole McGranahan Tibet Cara Wallis Technology M. Taylor Fravel Security Joseph Wong Politics Adam Cathcart History Hyun Shin Urbanization Heather Inwood Literature Jonathan Sullivan Politics Sam Geall Environment James Carter History Dali L. Yang Economy Ralph Litzinger Culture Min Jiang Internet Amy Jane Barnes Visual culture Nick Admussen Literature Jon Taylor Politics Hilde De Weerdt History Victor Shih Economy Sam Crane Classics Clayton Dube Politics Laura Luehrmann Politics Jocelyn Chatterton History Craig Clunas Art history Cobus van Staden China-Africa Jeremy Wallace Politics Julie Yu-Wen Chen Ethnicity Susan Fernsebner History James Wicks Pop culture Florian Schneider Media Rya Butterfield communication Jessica Chen Weiss Foreign relations Gary Rawnsley Public diplomacy Guobin Yang Internet Andrew Quintman religion Eileen Chow Pop culture Gerald Roche Tibet Lynette H Ong Political economy Deborah Brautigam China-Africa Robbie Barnett Tibet Marcella Szablewicz Internet Carl Minzner Law Sara Hsu Political economy

In order to investigate the experiences and attitudes of China scholars who use Twitter, I sent an online survey by email, which elicited 98 responses and represents about one third of

China scholars using Twitter. Of this cohort of respondents, half reported using Twitter for more than two years, with a further third starting between 1 and 2 years previously, and 15% were newcomers with less than a year’s experience. Of these respondents, 44% reported

4 The complete list of China scholars and graduate students is available at http://bit.ly/1DNx1Db and http://bit.ly/1DNxbub respectively.

10 using Twitter for up to an hour every day, with 5% spending more than an hour. 40% spent less than 15 minutes. The vast majority of scholars (91%) use Twitter to collect information and keep up to date. Around three quarters of scholars share links and materials, publicize their own activities and connect with other China scholar. Around two thirds used Twitter to connect with China-focused professionals in other sectors. Of less concern to respondents was using Twitter to promote their institution’s activities, and less than one third used Twitter for non-professional purposes. A picture thus emerges of China scholars using Twitter for professional reasons, as a means to gather intelligence, network and, in marketing parlance, build their personal brand. On the downside, 81% said that Twitter had distracted them from other tasks. 30% reported having been drawn into arguments or attacked for their opinions and 20% said they had to sacrifice other activities to make time for Twitter. A small minority of one in ten felt that their managers frowned on it. Asking respondents to identify how much

Twitter had helped them develop certain competencies, more than half said that helped them become a lot better informed. 94% said Twitter had helped expand their academic and professional networks a lot or somewhat, while 40% thought it had not helped their academic reputations at all. Table 2 sets out the rest of the responses.

Table 2: How much has Twitter helped you to…? (%) A lot Somewhat Not at all

Expand academic & other professional networks 42 52 4 Expand media networks 32 48 18 Increase public profile 25 61 11 Increase academic reputation 3 50 40 Better informed 51 44 4 Helped research 11 62 23 Increased confidence to engage different audiences 18 44 38 Honed concision/clarity in expression of ideas 9 50 41

In addition to the survey, I also asked a number of open ended questions. First, I sought to understand whether using Twitter had changed the way colleagues acquired and consumed information. Several colleagues noted how Twitter had broadened the scope of the information they receive, allowing them to keep up with recent scholarship, activities in the

11 field and “provid[ing] greater avenues for collecting, verifying and consuming information.”

With careful selection of people to follow, Twitter helped some colleagues to save time, allowing the consumption of timely material and exposure to a broader spectrum of sources, introducing new ideas and teaching materials. One colleague noted the benefit of experiencing breaking events like the Umbrella movement, and exposure to many more views than those concentrated in news reports. Networking effects were noted by several colleagues, one of whom commented that Twitter has “provided me with a wider network than I could ever achieve in real life.” Another colleague liked the “serendipity of Twitter, the clash of completely different ideas, sparking the generation of new ones.” These are certainly positive features of Twitter, but as noted above it demands time that would perhaps be better spent on the traditional currency of academia, notably publishing. I thus asked colleagues to comment on whether they had noted any effects on their scholarly productivity since they started using Twitter. Some colleagues note that becoming established on Twitter, and learning how to use it most effectively, had a negative impact on their productivity in the short-term. However, many more suggested that being active on Twitter had increased their productivity by leading to collaborations, building networks and increasing the feeling of

“being in touch” with developments in the field and on the ground. Others noted how access to resources sent their way on Twitter had enhanced their teaching, led to more “robust bibliographies”, and sparked ideas for research. At least one scholar’s experience on Twitter had altered the way they think about scholarly productivity. And ultimately, it is certainly the case that “plenty of academically productive people are on there,” although the advice to

“unplug” and ensure balance is well taken.

There are, of course, negatives. Several colleagues noted the sensitivity of expressing views about China publically, especially among ECRs without permanent positions, particularly given Twitter’s likeness to a megaphone with global reach. Others said their

12 peers frowned on using Twitter as a waste of time or crassly self-promotional, and remarked that “posting actively on Twitter won't help me write my book [or] count for my tenure & promotion file.” A major issue is information overload and the pressure to be ‘always on’.

But provided individuals can strike a balance, “it is possible to construct a group of serious- minded, well-informed people whether in the media, think tanks, or academia,” something that many scholars are unaware of. Other colleagues noted tensions between Twitter use and scholarly habits like slower moving careful study, and even the notion that sharing insights was equal to “giving something good away for free” and potentially “helping the competition out, i.e. other scholars.” Despite these issues, 96% of those surveyed said they would recommend Twitter to other colleagues. It is important not to read too much into this given that respondents are active users who were also motivated to respond to questions about

Twitter. Many respondents share the view that “it as an important way of building a public facing online presence,” and a way to “find confidence in your own voice.” With the caveat that, “if you are prone to saying dumb things, then it is best not to tweet whatever your academic rank.” One colleague suggests to “make your university's public relations people aware of your presence, as well as your Chair and Dean -- they love talking about their faculty using social media like Twitter for scholarly and teaching purposes.” While another has excellent advice on keeping “a community-minded approach […] sharing, highlighting, and promoting colleagues' work [as] generosity is key to fostering a vibrant scholarly community that benefits everyone.”

Conclusion

External engagement activities leading to dissemination of research beyond the academy, demonstrating “value” to a range of stakeholders and establishing “pathways to impact”, are becoming a routine expectation for academics in the UK and other western countries. While

13 using Twitter alone cannot meet these expectations, I have argued in this paper that it can be a useful academic tool, and have shown that a significant cohort of China scholars are already doing so to great effect both individually and in terms of raising the profile of the academic field of China Studies. Research examining the relationship between China scholars and journalists (Sullivan, 2014), the advice to China scholars that came up most frequently was to use Twitter as the most effective way to “stay part of the conversation”, raise profiles and get key ideas or publications noticed. One journalist commented that “every reporter in China is on Twitter and we look for links and context and brief analysis”. Another stated that “on breaking stories I go to Twitter [to see] who is paying attention, who has an interesting angle and who has the bona-fides to discuss the topic and often send them a direct message or email.” Twitter was also described as a good medium for first establishing contact with journalists, sustaining a relationship by periodically interacting with them and demonstrating a talent for the desired journalistic attributes of concision and clarity: “People who Tweet tend to be knowledgeable and concisely quotable. When asked what China scholars should do to facilitate external engagement, the editor of an American news magazine replied simply (in upper case) “GET ON SOCIAL MEDIA!” Engaging on social media, producing concise, accessible posts or comments on current and upcoming issues is an effective way to demonstrate areas of expertise and establish useful connections and reputation in the media, among other China professionals and academic peers. As my PhD student’s experience demonstrates, opportunities are there for the taking and Twitter is an effective vehicle for revealing and exploiting them. While the decision to use Twitter is a personal one based on a number of contextual and agent-based factors, the growing China Studies community on

Twitter suggests that it is worth exploring.

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