Using her own extensive experience as an intellectual blogging and writing in public spaces, McMillan Cottom examines the politics at play in being an engaged academic online. She argues that despite the current call for social engagement and visibility, not all public intellectuals are treated equally online; that is, women and people of colour are often targeted and harassed for speaking publicly on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or their own blogs. McMillan Cottom writes:

Put simply, all press is good press for academic microcelebrities if their social locations conform to racist and sexist norms of who should be expert. For black women who do not conform to normative expectations of ‘expert,’ microcelebrity is potentially negative. (n.p.).

McMillan Cottom gets to the heart of one of the major challenges of open, social scholarship—the potential for abuse and harassment that working in the open can entail, especially for perceived minorities.

 

Work cited

McMillan Cottom, Tressie. 2015. “Who Do You Think You Are?”: When Marginality Meets Academic Microcelebrity.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology 7: n.p. doi:10.7264/N3319T5T