Grainne Conole (2010) writes about the mystery that academics don't seem to engage much with Web 2.0 - a mystery because you would think that academia and Web 2.0 should be so compatible.
Web 2.0 tools are all about 'active participation, peer critique, collective intelligence through social aggregation of resources, etc...' - so a lot of the same characteristics that we find in academic publication.
So why don't more academics write blogs?
And why do many of the 10% of academics who do write blogs (according to Kirkup, 2010) use a pseudonym?
Blogs' subjective, informal style goes against the grain of academic norms
Kirkup's view is that academics are wary of blogging, and don't recognise it as academic publishing - blogs are informal, and have a subjective style "which seems in opposition to traditional forms of academic text which value an 'objective' authorial voice: writing which focuses on the management and presentation of information above the management and presentation of self" (Hyland, 2002, cited in Kirkup, 2010, p.76).
Blogs don't count as academic publications
Kirkup (2010) cites Lovink (2008), who writes: "For most academics, blogs are irrelevant because they don't count as publications." So there's a big systemic issue here - academic reputation and career progression depends a lot on an academic's publication record.
Opportunities for change - could there be an evolution in peer review norms?
A lot of the wariness towards blogs seems to be due to the fact that they sit outside the boundaries of academic rigour - but Web 2.0 gives us the tools to change that. Just as Wikipedia has evolved ways of peer-reviewing the quality of an article posted there, with a vetted hierarchy of reviewers, why couldn't something similar happen in academia?
Kirkup notes that blogs are increasingly cited in formal academic publications, so maybe we are just witnessing the early stages of such an evolution.
Kirkup also notes the increasing existence of 'University Blogs' - universities hosting blogs by some of their academics on the university website, as a way of delivering trustworthy content and also as a marketing mechanism for the university - so we're seeing some forms of blog that have been accorded more formal recognition already.
And could there be a freeing-up of academic identity?
I liked Kirkup's view that blogs could actually 'free up' some academics, who may currently feel constrained by the cultural norms of academia, so that they express themselves in new ways - Kirkup thinks that some academics may feel conflicted in expressing their identities (e.g. their race or their class) because they feel the need to conform to academic norms. Blogging may allow the space for an evolution of academic voices and identities.
Web 2.0 tools are all about 'active participation, peer critique, collective intelligence through social aggregation of resources, etc...' - so a lot of the same characteristics that we find in academic publication.
So why don't more academics write blogs?
And why do many of the 10% of academics who do write blogs (according to Kirkup, 2010) use a pseudonym?
Blogs' subjective, informal style goes against the grain of academic norms
Kirkup's view is that academics are wary of blogging, and don't recognise it as academic publishing - blogs are informal, and have a subjective style "which seems in opposition to traditional forms of academic text which value an 'objective' authorial voice: writing which focuses on the management and presentation of information above the management and presentation of self" (Hyland, 2002, cited in Kirkup, 2010, p.76).
Blogs don't count as academic publications
Kirkup (2010) cites Lovink (2008), who writes: "For most academics, blogs are irrelevant because they don't count as publications." So there's a big systemic issue here - academic reputation and career progression depends a lot on an academic's publication record.
Opportunities for change - could there be an evolution in peer review norms?
A lot of the wariness towards blogs seems to be due to the fact that they sit outside the boundaries of academic rigour - but Web 2.0 gives us the tools to change that. Just as Wikipedia has evolved ways of peer-reviewing the quality of an article posted there, with a vetted hierarchy of reviewers, why couldn't something similar happen in academia?
Kirkup notes that blogs are increasingly cited in formal academic publications, so maybe we are just witnessing the early stages of such an evolution.
Kirkup also notes the increasing existence of 'University Blogs' - universities hosting blogs by some of their academics on the university website, as a way of delivering trustworthy content and also as a marketing mechanism for the university - so we're seeing some forms of blog that have been accorded more formal recognition already.
And could there be a freeing-up of academic identity?
I liked Kirkup's view that blogs could actually 'free up' some academics, who may currently feel constrained by the cultural norms of academia, so that they express themselves in new ways - Kirkup thinks that some academics may feel conflicted in expressing their identities (e.g. their race or their class) because they feel the need to conform to academic norms. Blogging may allow the space for an evolution of academic voices and identities.
References
Conole, G. (2010) ‘Facilitating new forms of discourse for learning and teaching: harnessing the power of Web 2.0 practices’, Open Learning, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 141–51. [Online] Available at:http://oro.open.ac.uk/21461/2/9735BAEE.pdf
(Accessed 5 Feb 2013)
Kirkup, G. (2010) ‘Academic blogging, academic practice and academic identity’, London Review of Education, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 75–84. [Online] Available at: http://oro.open.ac.uk/20714/1/Academic_blogging_ORO.pdf
(Accessed 5 Feb 2013)
Just a thought, drawn out by your foregrounding of the idea of an evolution in how blogging is used and perceived: do you think an evolutionary approach here is necessarily a slow bottoms-up movement?
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