Is Social Media Good for History?

‘Social media favours the quirky, the visual, the gruesome’

Catherine Fletcher, Professor of History, Manchester Metropolitan University and author of The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance (Bodley Head, 2020)

At its best, social media is a remarkable mechanism for exchanging ideas, book recommendations and contacts, all of which makes the life of the historian a great deal easier. Last year, I was part of a conference round table featuring research on Manchuria, Korea, Russia and Italy, which wouldn’t have happened without Twitter. Archive work can be isolating and social media can be an excellent virtual water-cooler, a place to swap jokes and amusing tales, such as the mystery of the shrinking crocodile that occupied me and my followers while I was working on the Medici wardrobe records. (Both large and small crocodiles were among the curiosities collected by the 16th-century dukes of Florence.)