The Power, Pitfalls, and Precarity of Twitter

In this workshop Jennifer Ho will discuss her initial mistrust of Twitter, her eventual embrace of the bird app, going viral in ways both satisfying and unsettling, and why she has stayed despite her Mastodon account. She will talk about the good, bad, and ugly of social media—and how Twitter in particular can be a powerful platform to share academic expertise and reach a wide audience. And she will share stories about being targeted and ways to stay safe navigating social media and the need for exit strategies since all social media platforms may, at the end of the day, have an expiration date (My Space anyone?) that we can’t yet see.

If you have been curious about Twitter, if you have an account but haven’t really posted anything, or if you want to know how to engage publicly and deal with trolls, we hope you’ll join this workshop.

The daughter of a refugee father from China and an immigrant mother from Jamaica, whose own parents were, themselves, immigrants from Hong Kong, Jennifer Ho is the director of the Center for Humanities & the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she also holds an appointment as Professor of Ethnic Studies. She is past president of the Association for Asian American Studies and the author of three scholarly books and two edited collections. In addition to her academic work, Ho is active in community engagement around issues of race and intersectionality, leading workshops on anti-racism and how to talk about race in our current social climate. You can follow her on Twitter @drjenho.