Social Media Content for Sarah Smith's "King of Space"
Performing Traversals of electronic literature live, online, and using social media channels adds a participatory aspect to the existing Pathfinders Traversal model. We are able to keep seminal works like Sarah Smith's King of Space alive by sharing their existence with a wider audience, capturing more of the depth and richness of the scholarly conversation surrounding these works, and recording the ensuing conversation for posterity.
On the day of the Traversal for Smith's work, the undergraduate researchers, ELL faculty and staff, and Amber Strother, who was performing the Traversal, gathered in the lab. The undergraduate researcher curating social media feeds had notes from their research and from Grigar’s critical study on hand to feed content into the social media conversations. While Strother performed the Traversal, Grigar moderated the live YouTube chat and later the question and answer session. The undergraduate researchers documented the event on Facebook and Twitter and with photography, mixing in prepared research on the work and its criticism with observations, comments, and interactions with other participants.
To the research question underpinning this book, “How can a live internet broadcast and social media effort extend the reach and increase participation in a Traversal of a work of early e-lit?,” we discovered was that the use of social media channels did, in fact, extend the reach of the Traversal. The interactions gathered on Twitter differed from those gathered on Facebook. The chat conversation from the YouTube channel had the most interaction and the fastest paced conversation. Gathering Twitter and YouTube together, plus photographs, on Storify was a useful way of providing a lasting documentation of the conversation threads. Having multiple channels open and monitored during the question and answer session allowed for a broader, more varied, and richer conversation during the question and answer period.
Facebook, Part 1
These Facebook posts cover the period from 24 September 2018, beginning with the general announcements about the event, to the rehearsal that took place on the Thursday before the event, to the day of the event.
Facebook, Part 2
These Facebook posts were made on the day of the event, 29 January 2018.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur dictum mauris in lorem egestas feugiat. Proin vel quam justo. Aenean egestas arcu at nisi dapibus aliquet. Nunc luctus elit ut interdum tristique. Nullam vel finibus mi. Aenean porta nulla tristique urna cursus placerat. Donec et libero vitae lorem vestibulum finibus sit amet nec magna. Vestibulum mollis mauris justo, varius tincidunt augue gravida at. Aenean vel elementum nisi. Nunc quam nisl, accumsan semper nisi eget, interdum lobortis augue. Nullam ultrices lacus vitae consequat pellentesque. Proin tempus erat et erat accumsan, non aliquam lacus placerat. Integer sit amet felis neque. Sed quis congue arcu.
Storify
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur dictum mauris in lorem egestas feugiat. Proin vel quam justo. Aenean egestas arcu at nisi dapibus aliquet. Nunc luctus elit ut interdum tristique. Nullam vel finibus mi. Aenean porta nulla tristique urna cursus placerat. Donec et libero vitae lorem vestibulum finibus sit amet nec magna. Vestibulum mollis mauris justo, varius tincidunt augue gravida at. Aenean vel elementum nisi. Nunc quam nisl, accumsan semper nisi eget, interdum lobortis augue. Nullam ultrices lacus vitae consequat pellentesque. Proin tempus erat et erat accumsan, non aliquam lacus placerat. Integer sit amet felis neque. Sed quis congue arcu.
You Tube Live Chat
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur dictum mauris in lorem egestas feugiat. Proin vel quam justo. Aenean egestas arcu at nisi dapibus aliquet. Nunc luctus elit ut interdum tristique. Nullam vel finibus mi. Aenean porta nulla tristique urna cursus placerat. Donec et libero vitae lorem vestibulum finibus sit amet nec magna. Vestibulum mollis mauris justo, varius tincidunt augue gravida at. Aenean vel elementum nisi. Nunc quam nisl, accumsan semper nisi eget, interdum lobortis augue. Nullam ultrices lacus vitae consequat pellentesque. Proin tempus erat et erat accumsan, non aliquam lacus placerat. Integer sit amet felis neque. Sed quis congue arcu.
 Pathfinders - Home_thumb.png){kind=link}
