It started with a chance discovery at a second-hand book store – and ended with an appearance on the BBC’s Newshour and a New York Times feature. When my PhD student, Tricia Kehoe, came across a dusty old copy of Sue in Tibet, an obscure fictional tale of the adventures of an American missionary’s daughter in the Tibetan borderlands in the 1920s, she posted a picture of the book on Twitter. Within minutes she had received a message from Samanthi Dissanayake, Asia editor for the BBC News website. The two swapped emails and discussed the possibility of a piece based on the book. Over the next few weeks, Tricia delved into the author’s background, finding missionary documents about the historical family online, and connecting (via Twitter) with a museum in the US that houses the artefacts the family collected while in Tibet. Through the museum, she tracked down the author’s familyand uncovered the fascinating real life adventures of Dorris Shelton Still which the book dramatizes. The BBC published the resulting piece on their website, which quickly generated a buzz in the Twittersphere. A few hours after the piece was released, Dhruti Shah, a journalist at the BBC World Service, contacted Tricia via Twitter to request an interview, and an hour later she was on air talking to Newshour host James Coomarasamy. The New York Times subsequently featured the story as part of their “Women in the World” series. Count this as another victory for “the engine of creativity that is Twitter,” tweeted Dissanayake. For Tricia, this was a positive outcome. It helped to expand her public profile, generated media exposure for her research and demonstrated a capacity to engage audiences beyond the academy. In an intensely competitive academic job market, it is useful for young scholars to signal such attributes to potential employers, alongside traditional markers of academic excellence. The purpose of this research note is to explore, in a more systematic manner, whether Twitter is a useful tool for China scholars, particularly junior colleagues, and for the China studies field more generally. Full paper available for download at China Quarterly.
