In “SC/MS,” Justin Horton chronicles his experience at this year’s Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Conference. Among the subjects Horton broaches is the conference’s Twitter backchannel, which apparently teemed with tweets from television studies people and sorely lacked tweets from cinema studies folks. Somewhat bewildered, Horton ultimately ponders, “Who’d have thought there would be such a pronounced divide in terms of social networking?”
A follower of both film and TV studies people on Twitter, I’ve thought for a few days about this divide — which occurs regularly, not just on conference backchannels — and have wondered why it exists. I can only speculate…
First, I’m curious about the average age of the film and TV studies participants (I did not attend SCMS this year). If I had to bet, I’d say that on the whole, the TV folks are younger than their film colleagues (because it’s a younger field?) and, thus, more likely to embrace Twitter during panel discussions/presentations.
Second, a quick glance through this year’s SCMS program indicates that a large number of film panels considered classical Hollywood/world cinema (e.g., blacklisting, Kurosawa, Ginger Rogers, the 1940s American western, silent melodramas) and film theory, the latter of which is arguably untweetable. (Or at least, please don’t tweet film theory to me!) So are presentations on Ginger Rogers’s makeup, Kurosawa’s wartime filmmaking, and female insanity in silent melodrama not as tweet-worthy as those on social trauma in Rescue Me, romantic fables in True Blood, or objects of desire in The Misfits? Well, the SCMS Twitter archive suggests that’s the case.
Another reason TV scholars perhaps embrace Twitter more than film scholars is that the former is virtually always wading in the present (or near-present), unlike the latter who’s frequently teaching/examining canonical texts from the past. And as we all know, Twitter, although it need not be, is all about the here and now, not the Golden Age of Hollywood.
A final reason that a Twitter divide may exist between film and TV folks is that the quality of television currently trumps that of movies. In other words, discussing The Good Wife, Community, and Breaking Bad is far more engaging than doing the same with Season of the Witch, No Strings Attached, or Battle: Los Angeles, for example. Also, virtually everyone has a TV set; not everyone has the time/money/willingness to go to the Cineplex.
In his SCMS post, Justin Horton made one more comment about the Twitter backchannel: “How I’d love to see such esteemed cinema faculty giving and taking via Twitter.” As a film professor, I’d certainly like to see this too. After all, there are several of us out there, many of whom tweet daily and excitedly about both classical and current cinema. Maybe in the near future, this will change. In the meantime, here’s a list of several film and TV folks who tweet. If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know!
Film/TV Profs (and PhD Students) on Twitter…
Chuck Tryon | chutry: Professor of film and media studies. Movie geek. Blogger. Runner. Author of Reinventing Cinema (Rutgers UP).
Jen Proctor | proctor: Professor of film and video. Maker of images and sounds.
Amanda Ann Klein | princesscowboy: princess, cowboy, film professor, mother, judgmental observer.
Kristen Warner | kristenwarner: Black woman. Casting studies. Oprah lover/hater. Skirt wearer. Assistant Professor.
Christine Becker | crsbecker: Film and TV studies professor at Notre Dame. I tweet about TV, academia, sports, life. I also run @N4TVM & @GoodTVeets.
Erika Johnson-Lewis | ErikaJL: Independent media/tv studies scholar. Presently a film and humanities adjunct. I heart TV. LesMills BodyAttack instructor.
Anna Froula | frozola: Assistant Professor of Film Studies at East Carolina University.
Alisa Perren | aperren: Media studies prof at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Co-editor of Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method. Coordinating Editor of In Media Res. http://www.themediaindustries.net
Faye Woods | fayebellineW: I watch TV, I read about TV, I teach TV. I also enjoy other activities
Lucy Fife Donalson | LFDonaldson: Film Researcher & enthusiast of TV, food and design. Currently teaching film at University of Reading.
Melanie Kohnen | _mesk: Postdoc, teaching+researching television, new media, film
Anthony C. Bleach | acbleach: Professor of media and film studies at Kutztown University. Cinephile. Blogger. Runner. Supporter of Liverpool FC. Lover of cats.
Glenn Heath Jr. | MatchCuts: Child of the 80s, film teacher, critic, life-long Padres fan, writer for Slant Magazine/House Next Door. Movies and baseball are great.
Alisa Perren | aperren: Media studies prof at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Co-editor of Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method. Coordinating Editor of In Media Res.
Amber Watts | amber_watts: Assistant Professor of Film, TV, and Digital Media at TCU.
Caryn Murphy | carynage: Film and TV prof.
Michael Newman | mznewman: Asst prof media studies @ UW Milwaukee, author of two pretty good blog posts about The Hills.
Max Dawson | fymaxwell: TV historian. Assistant professor at Northwestern University. Survivor fanatic. Cat lover. Chronic kvetcher.
Kelli Marshall | KelliMarshall: Professor of film and Shakespeare. Lover of pop culture, Gene Kelly, and cocker spaniels.
Myles McNutt | memles: Amateur Television Critic at Cultural Learnings/The A.V. Club and Graduate Student in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Cory Barker | corybarker: Television critic at TVSurveillance.com. MA student in Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University. In lust with lists.
Anne Helen Peterson | annehelen: Doctor of celebrity gossip; author of Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style: http://annehelenpetersen.com. My best self writes for @TheHairpin.
Noel Kirkpatrick | noelrk: GA State University MA candidate, Monster of Television, and lover of cats and penguins. Also likes animation and video games. irresistible-ish.
Justin Horton | justinbhorton: PhD student in Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University. Interests include film theory, cinematic realism, sound studies, and Deleuze. And craft beer.
Karen Petruska | greeney28: Studying TV, New Media, Media Industries, Feminist Theory, and Italian.
Erin Meyers | erin_meyers: Media scholar currently interested in celebrity culture and new media. Avid fan of eating and making cake and other baked goods. Mostly eating.
Drew Ayers | drew_ayers: PhD candidate in Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University.
Matthew Kerry | drmattkerry: Films, filmmaking & the great British holiday. Author of The Holiday and British Film
Jo Murphy | jomurphy87: I spend all day writing about remakes and slasher films. I’m a very serious academic.
Michael Aronson | MichaelAronson: Film History Professor.
Shaun Huston | ShaunHuston: Associate professor of geography and film studies at Western Oregon University. I also write for PopMatters.
Matt Harris | fadedreq: Humanities and Film Professor (virtual even) and Pop Culture Junkie.
Doctor K | doctork100: English and Film Professor, comics enthusiast.
Owain Gwynne | ogwy001: PhD student at the University of Otago, New Zealand. My current research involves studying fan responses to the upcoming Hobbit movies.
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Hi Kelli, I identify as a media scholar, and I study film along with other media. My $0.02 is that film scholars have not established a twitter community as vibrant or lively as the TV scholar community, and part of this is the excitement over tweeting about TV as it airs "live". But it's not the whole story. I imagine TV scholars are more likely to have an interest in new media, whatever that means, than film scholars. But this is a very broad generalization. There are so many more film scholars than TV scholars, which makes the disparity more interesting in some ways, and more likely IMO to be related to the sense of community among TV twitterers than the appropriateness of film or TV as a topic for tweeting. Finally, I would be interested to read film theory tweets. Why not?
Hi, Mike. That's an excellent point you make about the TV community and live-tweeting, an activity which is of course highly frowned upon in a theatre — and rightly so.
You wanna read film theory tweets? Have at it, my friend; have at it. =)
Thanks so much for the list of film folks on Twitter. There were several there that I wasn't following—now remedied!
I tried to fill in the film backchannel at SCMS for the first few days—theory panels, too!—before stopping altogether. Failing to see more film conversation pop up under the hashtag gave me the impression that there wasn't much interest in archiving the conference from the film side. However, in the days since I've returned, a few of my tweets from SCMS have been re-tweeted, confirming that there are indeed interested film people combing the backchannel. Thus, there might not be much conversation happening at the conference via Twitter, but there is value in contributing to the to the backchannel.
Thanks for compiling the list and also for sharing your pedagogical practices (which I continue to ripoff as a matter of routine).
Great, Justin. I'm glad you found some more film folks to add to your list. And thanks again for sparking the entire blog post!
My lack of tweeting during SCMS is almost purely due to the fact that I am terrible at multitasking. I can't listen to a presentation, tweet about the presentation, and read tweets about other panels at the same time. It's also why I have a hard time "live tweeting." I find I have trouble keeping up with the program, tweeting about the program, and reading tweets that are often more entertaining than the program. For some things – like the Oscars – this works fine, since I don't really care about the content. For programs that I'm actually invested in, I find it almost impossible to divide my attention.
Kelli, I do think you have a point about the content of "theory tweets." Theory tweets can be alienating unless you're a person who has done a bunch of reading in the area. It tends to be much more specialized than, say, Oscar tweets. It's easy (and less intimidating) to jump into a conversation about contemporary media than it is to jump into a discussion about a theoretical topic that you might not be all that familiar with.
I actually experienced this at my SCMS panel. I was placed in a panel about architecture and space in film. The other two presenters presented really great papers about historical architecture, while I presented a more abstract analysis of space and materiality in a film/series that isn't necessarily widely-viewed (Kieslowski's THE DECALOGUE). Since the other topics were historical and more suited to general questions and elaborations, they received the bulk of the questions during the Q&A. If I had been placed on a Marxist film panel, I'm sure I would have received many more questions.
Perhaps this same problem translates to Twitter as well. I find myself confining my tweets to commentary on contemporary pop culture (which I love), rather than things I'm actually working on for my dissertation. The audience seems to be much larger for the former than it is for the latter.
Hey, Drew — I sometimes have a difficult time live-tweeting as well, which is why my feed is often sparse during conferences. So I completely understand your "multitasking problem." =)
The audience seems to be much larger for the former [contemporary pop culture] than it is for the latter [dissertation stuff].
– I agree, and that's sort of what I was trying to get across with the statement "TV scholars are virtually always wading in the present (or near-present)." They're watching and analyzing shows which most people on Twitter — scholars, reviewers, fans, etc. — have seen, and as you point out, those conversations are seemingly much easier to jump in on.
Thanks for commenting!
Just wanted to make sure it's clear that TV scholars do indeed do historical work. Much of the field is founded in such scholarship. I don't think that Twitter is an appropriate space for ANY real discussion of scholarship, theoretical, historical, whatever. I appreciate the conference tweets for giving me some insight into what was being said in other rooms, but we shouldn't mistake tweets for the content of someone's scholarly work.
Yikes! I certainly didn't mean to suggest that TV scholars don't engage in historical work. So sorry if that's how the post came across, Elana!
I agree with you to an extent that Twitter isn't "an appropriate space for any real discussion of scholarship." Indeed, it's difficult to converse about complex issues, theories, etc. in 140 characters or fewer, even over the course of several tweets. At the same time though, some of my recent publications, blog posts, and lecture material derive from and were fleshed out via Twitter conversations I had with other film and TV scholars.
Again, thanks for stopping by — and setting the point straight about TV scholars and historical scholarship! =)
Thanks for the post, Kelli. I do think there is something to be said for TV scholars wanting to *study* new media, including its social media incarnations. Twitter therefore is the hip thing right now, and worthy of some participatory analysis–but I'm guessing particular prominent TV figures will show up wherever the next social media thing is. IOW, there may not be anything inherently special about Twitter. But that's just a random hypothesis. I also wonder how many film scholars actively blog or use Facebook but do not use Twitter, because twitter seems strange to anyone who hasn't yet used it.
The question of age may be a valid one when considering why film scholars are not as likely to tweet. Dangerous generalization coming: a certain generation of film scholars has been rather indebted to a particular model of cinema, in particular an art cinema model that derives its chief characteristics from the materiality of film and the experience of cinema-going. I wonder if the mere question of new media threatens this model? Or at least lies outside of those central issues.
Hey, Karen — Thanks for stopping by! I wonder if you could explain a bit further what you mean by "a certain generation of film scholars has been rather indebted to a particular model of cinema, in particular an art cinema model that derives its chief characteristics from the materiality of film and the experience of cinema-going." Specifically, what exactly do you mean by "art cinema?" Thanks!
I identify as a "media/cultural studies" scholar, but my training and my interests are definitely more in film than in television (though I'm probably more personally invested in pop music than either).
One thing I've noticed in these post-conference discussions re: Twitter is that "participation" or "community" has been pretty consistently linked to live-tweeting or backchanneling. To me, it ain't necessarily so, and I would venture further to say that live-tweeting conference workshops or conference presentations has actually been a fairly ineffective application of the service for all parties–those presenting, those in the audience, and those following from remote locations.
I have yet to read a live-tweet account of an academic paper at a conference I was not attending and truly have a sense of what the argument is. At its best it's like watching SportsCenter highlights: entertaining, but not really representative of the entire game. At its worst, it seems incomprehensible and kind of annoying.
On the flipside, I've read in retrospect backchannel accounts of papers that I've watched in person and watched them render the actual paper unrecognizable (no doubt a result of the pressures of multitasking, I'm not at all dismissing the serious intellectual chops of the #scms twittersphere).
And backchanneling often does a disservice to audience members either uninterested or unable to participate–at workshops, the backchannel often railroaded the audience conversation for the entire session. This meant that half the people in the audience didn't understand how and why the conversation had turned the way it did, or the context of many of the remarks.
All this is not to say that Twitter doesn't have tons of exciting uses at conferences. And it is not to say that backchannels are useless across the board–I think it is clearly well-suited for providing commentary on (rather than summary of) shared simultaneous texts with frequent lulls or breaks. This doesn't have to be only tv–backchanneling film screenings, for example, can be really great for teaching.
It's great that many people at SCMS who have had good experiences with backchannels (often but not always "tv/media" people) are trying it out in new contexts. But not all applications of Twitter will work in all circumstances, and IMHO this is one case where the practice just isn't suited for the situation. This doesn't mean we can't use Twitter in different ways–I used twitter every day at scms. I posted a link to my presentation right before I gave it, I shared my handle on my final presentation slide to invite feedback after the panel was over, and checked in before/after panels that I saw to give my impressions or register my excitement. Again, not to say that these were without problems either, or that they worked any better at all! We're all trying to figure out how this will work best. All I would say is that I think we should think about outcomes rather than genres of Twitter-writing when imagining how we'll use it in the future.
Hi, Michael — you've made some valid points re: the cons of Twitter backchannels, e.g., tweeting can "render a presentation unrecognizable," and it can come across as "incomprehensible and kind of annoying." Thanks. I've experienced both of these at times. Proper (?) live-tweeting definitely requires a certain type of person…
But I haven't experienced the third "con" you mentioned: "the backchannel often railroaded the audience conversation for the entire session." Are you saying that only those who live-tweeted spoke up, raised questions, etc. after the presentation/papers and, therefore, non-tweeters and/or panelists there in the room had no idea what was going on?
I wouldn't say "only," but I do think those who were either actively posting to twitter or reading the backchannel dominated discussions in multiple workshops I attended. When this happened, there were many people in the room who didn't understand the context of much of the discussion, and thus had a much more difficult time contributing to the discussion–which defeats the purpose of a workshop.
I honestly don't think backchanneling is a worthwhile way to use twitter at conferences, at least in the ways i've seen it used or in the kinds of conference presentations i've seen. Perhaps in the larger panels like the Showrunners panel Henry Jenkins hosted in LA? Or perhaps if the backchannel were actively projected during each panel (which is how i've used backchannels during screenings). But I suspect that there are better ways to use Twitter for this context that we just haven't tried yet.
Sorry to come to this so late! There's two film grad students on Twitter from my institution in New Zealand – mine's jomurphy87, and the other is ogwy001.
Thanks, Jo! I’ll add them to the list!