Should Academics Blog?

Here I summarise 7 articles which each take academic blogging as their focus. These summaries are mostly quotes from the particular papers with a little of my own commentary - appended in italics. The aim of this post is to provide academics which will, I hope, entice them to blog professionally to:

1. Increase exposure of their programme.
2. Provide a model for students who have to submit reflective journals.
3. Offer a different format for reflective journals.

• Glenn, David. "Scholars who Blog: The soapbox of the Digital Age Draws a Crowd of Academics." The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 6, 2003): http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i39/39a01401.htm

"Academic bloggers worry that the medium smells faddish, ephemeral."
"Academic bloggers are sometimes subject to twinges of self-consciousness and guilt, and fear that their elders will thing they're misbehaving."
"There are no financial returns to blogging."

Yet a department/programme can increase enrolments - a form of financial return - through the wider publicity their blog can generate. There is also the chance to raise the institution's good-will factor as well as the possibility of picking up publishing contracts. All these benefits are not tangible "financial returns" but blogs can increase financial returns in the long run.

"Anyone at all can read and comment on their discussions."
"Blogs also appear to bring full professors, adjuncts, and students onto a level field."
"Write on your blog only when you think you have something to say."

This article provides advice and information for academics who are starting out in the blogsphere. Glenn, correctly, sees the blogsphere as a more open, democratic sharing of knowledge but this openness - currently at least - challes established publishing protocols of what constitutes "research."

• Tribble, Ivan. "First Person: Bloggers Need Not Apply." The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 8, 2005): http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2005/07/2005070801c.htm (accessed July 10, 2008).

"But it's best for job seekers to leave their personal lives mostly out of the interview process."

I am not sure how this impossibility is to be achieved - is he asking that we should have some nasty - not to mention mentally unstable - Dr-Jekyll-Mr-Hyde thing going on?

"Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline."

Tribble takes a very sceptical view of blogging. Indeed, he stops just short of saying that blogging can totally ruin your chances of securing a tenured position. Although, he does chose good - and funny - examples of people who's blogs show they are unsuitable for the position; here is the warning: think before you blog!

• Tribble, Ivan. "First Person: They Shoot Messengers, Don't They?" The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 2, 2005): http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2005/09/2005090201c.htm (accessed July 10, 2008).

"The issue is not the medium itself, but how it is used."

After the backlash from "Bloggers Need Not Apply" Tribble felt he needed to further clarify his thoughts on blogging and conceded that it was more the current use of blogs he was decrying. Although this article was more paying lip-service to The Chronicle's readership.

• Farrell, Henry. "The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas." The Chronicle of Higher Education (October 7, 2005): http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i07/07b01401.htm (accessed July 10, 2008).

"Is it a good idea to blog if you're on the job market or have a nontenured position?"
"Blogging would eat up time that could be devoted to publishing articles or working on a book."

But blogging IS a form of publishing. Not only are you actually publishing - and there is fault here with the system which does not regard a blog as a research output - but you can also blog with a view to publishing.

"While blogging has real intellectual payoffs, it is not conventional academic writing and shouldn't be an academic's main focus if he or she wants to get tenure."

This is talking more about the system than blogs themselves. Perhaps it is time for a bit more fine-tuning...

"Their blogs allow them not only to express personal views but also to debate ideas, swap views about their disciplines, and connect to a wider public."
"Academic blogs offer the kind of intellectual excitement and engagement that attracted many scholars to the academic life in the first place."
"Academic blogs also provide a carnival of ideas, a lively and exciting interchange of argument and debate that makes many scholarly conversations seem drab and dessicated in comparison."
"Blogging sacrifices some depth of thought [...] but provides in return a freedom and flexibility that normal academic publishing can't match."

A blog doesn't have to always sacrifice depth of thought though. You can always save your post as a draft and then keep working on it as you would an article. And there is no need to keep blogs short - even though the internet can give us the attention span of gnats.

"Which is not to say that blogs and more conventional forms of publishing can't compliment each other very nicely."
"Prominent academics who start blogging do have an initial advantage; they're more likely to attract early attention than people without established reputations."
"Less-well-known academics, and nonacademics with interesting things to say, have a real opportunity to speak to a wider public and to establish a reputation over time."
"Blogospheric conversations, when they're good, have a vigor and a liveliness that most academic discussion lacks."
"An unusually high level of intelligent discussion around a topic is more usually associated with stale pro- and anti-theory polemics."
"It's far harder than it used to be for academics to become public intellectuals."
"All of those blogs weave back and forth between the specialized language of academe and the vernacular of public debate. They are creating a space for dialogue between the two, connecting them together, and succeeding, to a greater or lesser degree, in changing both."
"They represent a serious challenge to well-established patterns of behavior in the academy."

Farrell's article is the most balanced I present here. Although he clearly sees blogging as a beneficial activity for academics, he also points out the dangers of which bloggers should beware. Perhaps I read too much into the article but I see that Farrell wishes to change the current academic system by undercutting the hegemony of the scholarly article to democratise academic publication and - here's the rub - help institutions value blogs as a "proper" academic outlet.

• Goetz, Rebecca A. "First Person: Do Not Fear the Blog." The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 14, 2005): http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2005/11/2005111401c.htm (accessed July 10, 2008).

"Blogs and the blogosphere are new concepts, and the possibilities for scholarly communication are endless and exciting."

Even though written almost three years ago and there has been some uptake of blogging by academics, the change is still slow to percolate up the institutional ladder.

"I have come to believe that those online exchanges build better, more involved scholars who have a wide circle of blog-colleagues."
"Perform thought experiments and try out ideas quickly without going through the conventional publication or conference process."
"There will be many more bloggers like me who mix the personal and the professional in fun and quirky ways."
"Job seekers who blog are thoughtful, interesting people who are fascinated by the possibilities that this new medium has for enhancing their personal and professional lives."

Goetz started this blog when she was a post-graduate History student at Harvard. Now, she has an academic position in Texas and is continuing to blog. This article was a conscious rebuttal to "Bloggers Need Not Apply" and consolidates the points raised by Farrell.

• Delong, J. Bradford. "Can Blogging Derail Your Career?: The Invisible College." The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 28, 2006): http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i47/47b00801.htm (accessed July 10, 2008).

"I would like a larger college."
"My invisible college is paradise squared, for an academic at least."
"Web logging is a lottery ticket to something int he future, unknown but good."
"Academics who blog think more profound thoughts, have a influence on the world - both the academic and the broader worlds - and are happier for it."

This depends on your definition of academic. Do academics not have the duty to the public good - since they, in New Zealand at least, are funded by public money - to promote increased knowledge?

"A thoughtful, intelligent, well-informed Web logger like Juan Cole or Dan Drezner is an important part of a university's public face."

This article is one of a further series of rebuttals to both of Tribble's articles and has become one of the foundation texts for academic blogging. Delong sees the blogsphere as a way for academics to widen their network of associations; a particularly useful tool for those departments which have a smaller staff and, therefore, for academics who may not have any colleagues interested in their particular area of research on hand.

• Drezner, Daniel W. "Can Blogging Derail Your Career?: The Trouble with Blogs." The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 28, 2006): http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i47/47b00701.htm (accessed July 10, 2008).

"Any substandard publication creates a black mark that is difficult to erase."
"Blogs are an outlet for unexpurgated, unreviewed, and occasionally unprofessional musings."
"Today's senior faculty members look at blogs the way a previous generation of academics looked at television - as a guilty, tawdry pleasure that should not be talked about in respectable circles."
"Any usurpation of scholarly authority is bound to upset those who benefit the most from the status quo."
"Quality blogs allow scholars to link grand theory to real-world events, cultivate new ideas, and spark public debates."

Again, Drezner focuses on how blogs can upset the status quo of academic publishing. It is for this reason that he feels the academy views blogs as somehow inferior rather than an innate sub-standard quality.