A Beginner’s Guide to Live-Tweeting Academic Conferences

Co-authored with Krista McCracken

It’s everyone’s favourite time of the year again: Congress! In advance of this year’s CHA Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Krista and I thought that this would be a good time to talk about the practice of live-tweeting: what it is, how it works, and best practices. This blog post assumes that you have a basic familiarity with Twitter. If you do not, or want to have a refresher, definitely check out Andrea’s previous guide to Canadian History on Twitter. Enjoy!

What is Live-Tweeting?

It may not come as a surprise to some people, but the advent of Twitter has substantially altered how individuals interact at academic conferences. While audience participation has traditionally been limited to question periods (if they happen at all) and/or discussion after a session, Twitter provided attendees with a new way to talk to each other about papers, panels, and the conference in general. But more importantly, it also allowed for interaction between presenters, the audience, and individuals who are not physically present. This has largely been through the medium of live-tweeting. Simply put, live-tweeting refers to the practice whereby an audience member “tweets” out a real-time summary or commentary while attending an event. In academic conferences, this mostly happens at panels, keynotes, AGMs, and awards.

Why Live-Tweet?

Because it’s awesome? On a more serious note, live-tweeting is an important practice in terms of building community and improving access. Conference registration and travel fees are often out of reach for graduate students, early-career academics, precarious academics, and folks with disabilities. But live-tweeting has meant that conferences can be opened up to a much wider audience.  But live-tweeting also has additional benefits. It can help generate excitement about new research and serve to promote or celebrate each other’s work. Live-tweeting can act as a form of public note taking, allow tweeters and others to reflect on the conference events as they happen and afterwards. Finally, live-tweeting enables one of the most import aspects of academic work: conversation and dialogue about new ideas.

That said, live-tweeting can seem very intimidating for those who have never done it before. What’s more, there are some potential pitfalls that it is important to be aware of. So here are our recommendations!

The Basics

• Most conferences have official hashtags (this year CHA’s hashtag is #CHASHC2019), and some even have session-specific hashtags. Always make sure you use them in every since one of your live-tweets, so that people can follow the conversation.
• Make sure to include at least one tweet with the presenter’s full name and the title of their paper.
  • If they have Twitter handles, make sure you use them. If you aren’t sure if the presenter has a Twitter handle, try searching their name on Twitter to check.

Ethics/Etiquette

• Distinguish between direct quotes and paraphrasing. You don’t want to give the impression that the presenter’s exact words are coming from you.
• If you are adding your personal thoughts about the event be clear that the comments are yours and not the speaker.
• Always be clear to credit the person who is speaking in every single tweet.
  • This can be as simple as just LastName: Otherwise some people might credit you for someone else’s ideas.
• Check to see if the event you are attending has a live-tweeting policy. Read it and respect it.
  • For example, the National Council on Public History generally encourages folks to live-tweet. However, certain sessions focused on sensitive topics such as sexual harassment might request that attendees avoid tweeting for the sake of safety and privacy.
  • You may also want to see the American Historical Association’s guidelines for tweeting at their Annual Meeting.
• Tweet respectfully. Is someone is sharing deeply personal it likely isn’t appropriate to live-tweet that content.
• Ask permission.
  • Respect their decision.
  • Do not ask them for an explanation if they say no.
  • Not everyone wants to have their paper live-tweeted. There are some who are concerned about others using their work without permission or credit. Some are planning to turn their presentation into a paper, and might not want to disrupt the blind peer-review process by making their paper searchable. Others, especially women and individuals from marginalized groups, experience significant online harassment, and may not want to advertise their presence or open themselves up for more harassment (especially if they deal with controversial topics).

Best Practices

• Either thread your Tweets (always reply to the first one) or compile them into a Twitter Moment aftwards. This will make it easier for folks to follow the entire presentation.
• We also generally recommend compiling your threads into Twitter Moments anyways, since they are a good way to make it easier for folks to understand entire presentations and follow any online conversation. Twitter Moments are also a way to make your Tweets last a bit longer than the brief moment where they might appear in someone’s timieline.
• Use pictures whenever you can! (and if you do, try to use the add-description function to make the images accessible to folks who are Blind or visually-impaired).
  • For instance, Krista often includes an image of the first slide or a screenshot of the session’s entry in the digital program. Andrea often takes pictures of the slides themselves.
  • Do not take photographs of people unless you have permission.
• Retweet and respond to other live-tweeters! Sharing is caring! 😉
• Think strategically about what you will include in each tweet.
  • You want to give a general sense of what is being discussed, but not repeat every since word the presenter is saying. We recommend one main point per tweet.

Practical Tips

• Try to bring a power cord (and find yourself an outlet) or bring along an external battery pack. Live-tweeting can be hell on your phone/tablet/laptop’s battery.
• It helps to sit in the back of the audience, since some audience members can find live-tweeting to be distracting.
• Accept that you will miss things and make absolutely horrendous typos. It happens to the best of us.
• Live-tweeting can be easier if you are using a device that has a full keyboard. But this isn’t a must, both Andrea and Krista have used phones to live-tweet.
• Take breaks! You don’t need to live-tweet every single presentation. It can be mentally exhausting to live-tweet, so working in breaks and only live-tweeting a certain number of panels a day is a good idea.
• Try to get familiar with the program ahead of time, so you can decide which panels or papers you would definitely like to live-tweet.
• If your presenters mentions an online source (like an article or a blog), definitely include a link in your live-tweeting thread if you can.
• Let people know that you will be live-tweeting ahead of time! You might also want to let folks know they can mute the conference hashtag if they aren’t interested in seeing all of your event tweets.

We hope that this post encourages or inspires you to consider live-tweeting at your next event! We have both really enjoyed it in previous years, and found it to be a rewarding experience.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post! If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. And don’t forget to check back on Sunday for a brand new Canadian history roundup. See you then!

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