Rebecca Kokitus

WRH205
Digital Ethnography – Final Draft

As an emerging writer in the digital age, I have had to learn to navigate the art of creating an
online persona, and using that persona to my advantage. There are writing communities on most
social media outlets, but I have found that given its high usability, text-based posting format and
interactive nature, Twitter seems to be the most accessible and productive medium.
I have found that Twitter lends itself well to the art of networking—a Twitter user can make
their account public, therefore does not have to go through the process of giving and being given
permission to connect with other users (such is the case on Facebook). I’ve also found it’s perceived
as much less “weird” to follow a stranger whose work you admire on Twitter than it is to send them
a friend request on Facebook.
Twitter’s text-based post formatting also makes it more navigable as a networking tool—
more so than social media outlets such as Instagram, which are largely image based. Twitter is highly
interactive in comparison.
I have been an on-again, off-again Twitter user since I was a teenager—since I was sixteen
or seventeen, I have had three or four different Twitter accounts—my most recent created in
September of 2017, for the sole purpose of cultivating a clean slate where I could be professional
and promote my writing. In the past year or so using this new account, I have assimilated myself
into the Twitter literary community.
Twitter’s literary community has “sub-groups” as well—typically divided by genre, by
publishing medium, and so on, although there is a fair amount of overlap among these sub-groups.
As a writer who writes and publishes primarily poetry, primarily in small press or indie journals, I am
most connected with other poets, and other writers in the small press/indie literature community,
although I also have “mutuals” (i.e. Twitter users who I follow, who follow me as well) who self-
publish via Amazon, who write fiction and other genres, etc.
Because I am already an active member of this community, I can easily study the
complexities of this community while performing the usual tasks of a writer on Twitter. I will be
examining the ways in which writers interact with one other on Twitter, what determines a writer’s
follower count, differences between on- and offline personas, ways the community manifests
 outside of the online sphere, how writers establish an online
persona and gain a following on Twitter, and some of the
benefits and drawbacks of a community such as this one.
I feel that although being a writer on Twitter is
admittedly self-serving—it is very self-promotion based, there
is a also a shared purpose or goal among the members of this
community. Although every writer wants to get their name out
in the world and wants to publish a ton of work, most writers
on Twitter also put a lot of time into supporting other writers
within the community, and use the platform as a networking
tool, or even just to befriend other writers. It can be argued
that all of these goals can be seen as just as self-serving as self-
promotion itself—who’s to say that a writer isn’t promoting
other writers as a way to gain credibility as a supportive voice in the community, therefore gaining
more of a following? Who’s to say that friendships made between writers do not have ulterior
motives?
This being said, I can say that most interactions I see within the community are positive
ones, although negative interactions appear every once in a while, which is something I will explore
as well in this study. But there seems to be an unspoken understanding that a personable online
presence and positive interactions with other artists will eventually lead to more exposure for
yourself. One example of pretty obvious self-promo-turned-supportive-interaction is the trend of
posting “#FollowFridays”—meaning, on Fridays, writers will tag other writers and literary journals
to show their support, which may lead to the tagged users gaining more recognition. A
“#FollowFriday” tag is a favor that is best returned, I’ve found—if someone does it for you, you
may as well do it for them. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.

examples of “#FollowFriday”, or “#FF”, posts from small press literary journals

In terms of negative interactions within the writing community, most negative interactions
between writers stem from a clash of beliefs—whether political or otherwise. Like any online—
or offline, for that matter—community, the writing community has its “problematic” figures.
Writers with exclusionary beliefs, writers who are abusers, harassers, abuse apologists, etc. There is a
strange sort of middle ground the writing community occupies when it comes to dealing with these
problematic individuals—some writers take it into their own hands to “call out” these figures, others
are very evasive and vague, either to protect themselves from an abuser, or simply from internet
trolls (yes, the literary community has those too, unfortunately). I can’t really say I’m particularly
fond of either method—“call out culture”, as I have seen it called, is a level of confrontation I find
myself uncomfortable with, simply because it is an invitation for conflict, yet being purposely
evasive about these problematic figures can be an issue too—if no one knows who is problematic,
how do they know who to stay away from? I have seen this particular kind of secrecy around
problematic figures referred to as a “whisper network”—meaning, information on potentially
harmful figures within a community is often passed along very privately, so if you do not know the
right people, you may be left out of the loop.
Besides the difficulties of making a name for oneself, I would say that dealing with
problematic figures in the community would be a major shared adversity among writers on Twitter.
As for the task of gaining a following—what exactly goes into it?
My current follower count on Twitter is fairly modest, but still substantial—around the time
I began this research, my follower account was around 1000. Today it is around 1600. I would say
this is more than I expected to have upon creating a writing-promotion-based account in September
of 2017, but still very modest in comparison to “big name” poets. I will be examining the ways in
which writers establish a presence on social media and gain a following both through personal
experience and through observation.
As mentioned earlier in this analysis with the example of “#FollowFriday” posts, both self-
promotion and the promotion of other writers seem to play integral roles in establishing oneself on
social media. Promotion of the self, promotion of journals, journals promoting contributors, writers
promoting other writers—all of these actions, although tedious, are part of finding an online
following.
Networking is also a huge part of this process—most writers don’t gain a following because
of their work alone. Being personable, conversing with and supporting other writers, forming
relationships—I guess they call it “social” media for a reason: the more social you are on social
media, the more support you will receive. People are less likely to support an artist who is detached
and disinterested in their readers and supporters.
It feels a little cynical of me to look this closely at these aspects of the Twitter literary
community, but at the end of the day, it is a business, right?
Although there are many advantages to being part of a community like this one, there are
also some drawbacks. Some specific ones that I took note of included the disconnect between the
offline and online self, the presence of a hierarchy (or “literary in-crowds”), and the controlled
nature of social media.
Like any kind of social media, there is a factor of comparison that finds its way into this
community—in the same way we scroll through Instagram and compare our lives to others, writers
will also compare themselves to one another. Social media gives such a controlled image of who a
person is—a writer may revel in their successes, such as a book deal or a publication in a big name
journal, but viewers do not see the years of sending out manuscripts, or the hundreds of rejection
letters, so they get a false idea that they are not doing enough, that they are not as talented as writers
with more accomplishments.
 I wasn’t entirely aware of the hierarchies of
the literary world until I found myself conversing
with someone who perceived themselves to be a
writer who had been “exiled from indie literature”. I
would definitely say there is an air of anxiety in
networking, and a strange sense of relief when that
one prolific writer you’d been following for a while
finally follows you back. That being said, I feel that
clique-like behavior in communities such as these can
be very toxic, and intimidating to people who are just
getting assimilated to Twitter’s literature community.
I have had times when I found myself frustrated with
the seemingly impenetrable realms of writers and
small press journals that I admired, but felt like I was
“beneath”. I guess groups like these form naturally—
writers with similar styles, journals with similar tastes,
etc, yet the exclusionary nature of some of these
groups can be unnerving.
Then there is the matter of persona—persona is at the heart of all of this. At the end of the
day, no one is truly who they are on the internet. Personas are curated to please others, whether this
is to “get in” with the “right” people, to gain a following, etc. There is a looming question of
whether any of this is “real” or not—does any of it actually matter? Why do we put so much
importance on it?
I have met a handful of writers I have connected with online in person by attending readings
and open mics within the Philadelphia literary community. I’ve found that some writers tend to be
much more laid-back and “human” upon meeting them in person—typically writers who strive for a
very professional online presence, or writers who are more quiet on social media. Is the disconnect
between person and persona necessarily a bad thing?
It’s hard to say—there is nothing wrong with a professional online presence; as I mentioned,
writing is a business at the end of the day, as much as it pains me to point out.
Does this mean that a writer who’s personality and persona are one in the same is more
authentic? Not necessarily.
Speaking of the offline aspect of this community, there are several ways in which this
community manifests outside of the internet—specifically through readings, open mic events, and
other similar literary events. Although these settings are just as heavily promotion based as their
online equivalent, the face-to-face factor seems to create a seemingly more down-to-earth
experience.
There are also other aspects of this community that differ between online and offline—a
small press, for instance, in real life, is often just one or two people working from their computers in
different parts of the country, collaborating to put together journals, chapbooks, and full length
books. It’s easy to see a journal as an object, an inhuman entity, in the online sphere, but the reality
is that without their very human editors, these journals and presses would not even exist at all.
The “real life” equivalent of this community also poses a new set of limitations—a writer
who has not “gone viral” (writers such as Rupi Kaur, Olivia Gatwood, etc) typically only has the
funding to be a part of a very localized literary community, as most writers cannot afford to fund
book tours and similar promotional events.
That being said, the online sphere has its own limitations. There is the very tangible
limitation of character limits of Twitter (now 280 characters per tweet), and also more nuanced
limitations, such as older writers being less familiarized with the complexities of social media, or the
very ephemeral nature of Twitter itself—it only takes a day or so for a Tweet to become buried on
the Timeline, therefore obsolete.
Nonetheless, through my analysis of Twitter’s literary community, I have come to the
conclusion that the online and offline counterparts of the literary community as a whole need each
other to thrive, and this is an excellent example of the ways artistic communities have adapted and
broadened within the growth of the digital age.