Yesterday I attended a symposium on academic blogging in Trinity College Dublin organised by the collective who produce Pue’s Occurrences. I was there to represent Ireland After NAMA (the other blogs represented are listed below). It was a very productive meeting and it was fascinating to listen to the experiences of other academic bloggers and the kinds of issues and challenges that they face through blogging. I thought it might be useful to share those challenges, so below is a basic summary. I’m sure that many of them are issues facing all bloggers, but some relate more specifically to the collective nature of many academic blogs, the kinds of material academic bloggers post, the relationship between academic blogger and their institutional affiliation, and the expectations concerning the kinds of outputs academics should be producing. I’d be interested to hear reflections on these issues/challenges or about others that are perhaps not on this list.
Sustainability
- feeding the monster – need to post regularly to build and maintain a reader base
- voluntarism – relies on voluntary labour and enthusiasm of posters
- in collective blogs, getting people to contribute – people are busy; but also a lack of confidence in the credibility of the media
Academic credibility
- some contributors worried about wasting work by publishing it through a media that presently lacks sufficient academic and institutional credibility and legitimacy
Building a readership/community
- how to implement successful strategies to develop a readership base
- building trust and relationship with readers; building a community
Relationship between individual creative/academic freedom and institutional control and oversight
- to what extent does a blog represent institution? What level of control do they/should they have over it?
- To what extent are blogs experimental thought spaces for ideas and analysis as opposed to formal spaces of reporting/commentary (does it have to have the same levels of rigour and validity as that written in a journal?)
Different way of working
- a blog can drive a research agenda and not the other way
- blogging is often a process of doing and publishing research in a just in time fashion
Different way of writing/communicating
- shorter pieces in a much more journalistic style; lacks usual academic conventions
- making ideas and writing open and accessible
Editorial policy
- for collective blogs – is there a need for an editorial policy or control? Or a writer’s/reader’s charter? What happens if people post material that is inappropriate or badly written? Who takes editorial control? On what basis?
Funding
- for design, maintenance and content, for subscriptions or servers, for events, etc
Media interest
- what happens if a post goes viral and the media get interested? It can be a lot of pressure and can take up a lot of time
Dealing with negative feedback/abuse
- vested interests do not necessarily like what you have to say and can react, sometimes not through public debate but by private means; how to deal with this?
Dealing with the public
- dealing with comments in a timely and informative manner; being prepared to engage beyond the initial posting.
- how to deal with people who ask you to do work on their pet projects
- discussion of work on other social media such as bulletin boards – do you engage? What happens when the material gets misinterpreted?
Dealing with conflicts of interest
- how to deal with posts on topics or expressing views that conflict with or undermine funders of the blogger’s research (or someone else’s in the collective)
Dealing with data issues
- publishing material that is copyrighted or used under data license; intellectual property issues in general
- maintaining links to other sites
Archiving and longevity
- what happens to the data and material being created? Long term archiving of material? Long term maintenance of material produced?
The blogs taking part were:
Pue’s Occurrences
Ireland After NAMA
UCD Academic Blogging
Irish Left Archive
Come Here To Me!
Some Blind Alleys
History Compass
The Model Blog
Rob Kitchin
June 4, 2010 at 8:06 pm
I’ve never heard of any of these blogs..interestin links. why just the humanities?
June 5, 2010 at 9:36 am
Interesting considerations of subject headings. Can I ask you a question on linking to newspaper articles, used extensively by Irelandafternama and others. The Irish Times for example seems to archive after one year, and restricts archive retrieval to subscribers. Don’t know about other media sources but the News International “paywalls” might put paid to links to their articles.
Presumably creating your own archive of press articles has copyright implications but then what about search engine caches?
Any ideas as to how to preserve newspaper sources. You chaps and ladies at Irelandafternama are likely to encounter deadlinks sooner than others!
June 6, 2010 at 5:29 pm
[…] and conversation never flagged. For an excellent summary of the issues we discussed, please see Rob Kitchin’s post on Ireland After Nama. Below I’ve listed a few points raised by each of the speakers and […]
June 10, 2010 at 9:03 am
[…] The symposium brought together bloggers and interested parties from inside and outside of academia to hear and engage with nine short presentations. This ensured a variety of perspectives on why people blog and what they hope to achieve by doing so. Some of the speakers write to promote the place where they work. Others are influenced by their political convictions. We also learned how blogs also offer an opportunity for academic voices to try to influence government policies. A useful overview of some of the issues discussed has been compiled by one of the participants, Professor Rob Kitchin. It is available at his remarkably successful blog, Ireland after NAMA. […]
June 16, 2010 at 3:20 pm
[…] a great round up from Ireland after Nama summarising the main issue raised, and watch the Pue’s Occurances page for more updates as a […]
May 30, 2011 at 9:01 am
[…] a great round up from Ireland after Nama summarising the main issue raised, and watch the Pue’s Occurances page for more updates as a […]