Social Media Etiquette

The following section is adapted from the article “Mea Culpa: on Conference Tweeting, Politeness, and Community Building,” published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Tweet conference panels using the following principles.

• Praise generously, sharing what you find interesting about presentations.

• Share pertinent links to people and projects, in order to bring attention to your colleagues’ work.

• When posting questions or critiques, include the panelist’s username (an @ mention) whenever possible.

• If the panelist does not have a username—or if you cannot find it—do your best to alert them when you post questions or critiques, rather than leaving them to discover those engagements independently.

• Avoid posting questions to Twitter that you would not ask in the panel Q&A.

• Avoid using a tone on Twitter that you would not use when speaking to the scholar in person.

• Avoid “crosstalk”—joking exchanges only tangentially related to the talk—unless the presenter is explicitly involved in the chatter.

• Do not post or engage with posts that comment on the presenter’s person, rather than the presenter’s ideas.