academic blogging.

As promised, my reaction to the most recent Digital Campus episode  Some background: Digital Campus is a biweekly podcast from the Center for History and New Media, dealing with issues of technology and the college classroom.  If you're teaching college students, you should be listening to this podcast--it's the most consistently intelligent and useful discussion about technology and teaching that I've found so far.  (Their first episode, about Wikipedia, actually effected a fairly substantial shift in my own reaction to Wikipedia as it relates to my students.  It was also just a breath of fresh air, to listen to a discussion about Wikipedia and college teaching that -didn't- engage seriously with the "Wikipedia is the Devil" mentality that's so prevalent among academics these days.) 

Episode 10 of Digital Campus is all about blogging, and was an interesting discussion, largely because the DC participants are all blog-positive.  (Also unusual in academia these days--I wouldn't say that Ivan  "Bloggers Need Not Apply" Tribble represents the majority view, but he represents a view that's cast a shadow across the whole dialogue.)  Dan Cohen in particular has a reputation as a persuasive advocate for professorial blogging, and I generally agree with him.  Blogs can be a useful venue for discussing one's work, for sharing ideas and information, for tapping into communities, and for making connections (both personal and professional).  There's no reason at all why being a professor (or a lecturer, or adjunct instructor, or what-have-you) should mean that you have to cut yourself off from the larger internet discourse.

The specific structure for the podcast discussion was an argument against anonymity or psuedonymity in academic blogging.  (Again, a reference from Dan Cohen's blog, which gives most of the context for the podcast discussion, for those of you who haven't heard the episode.)  I agree wholeheartedly here--not just because it makes my own non-anonymous blog feel less weird!  Anonymous blogging grows largely out of fear, and it's hard to overstate the degree of fear that permeates the academic world these days, especially at the level occupied by those of us who don't have tenured (or even tenure-track) positions.  The DC group, discussing the disappearance and reappearance of the formerly-anonymous PhDinHistory blog, commented that the author, Oklahoma graduate student Sterling Fluharty, never posted anything that would have seriously compromised his chances on the job market later on.  I'm glad to hear them say that, but I admit, were I in Fluharty's position, I'd have been just as nervous about guarding my identity.  I read his blog pretty regularly, because he provides an honest and statistically-grounded picture of just how dismal the employment picture is for those of us with doctorates in history.  (Think I'm exaggerating?  Go read the blog and see what I'm talking about.)  He's openly addressing all sorts of questions that I absolutely shy away from discussing even in oblique terms; it sometimes feels as though there's a veil of silence drawn across all of the practicalities and problems of employment in the academic world.

People blog anonymously out of the belief that what they write could somehow reflect badly on them or be used against them.  Anyone who's been involved with online journalling or blogging for any length of time, though, should have internalized the first rule of anonymous/pseudonymous writing: you will be found out.  Never say anything under an obscured identity that you wouldn't be willing to take responsibility for under your own name.  The second rule of anonymous/pseudonymous writing?  People will be -trying- to find out who you are.  People can't resist a puzzle.  I'm not saying that pseudonymous or anonymous writing is wrong--I'd be a hypocrite to say that, having engaged in it myself at various points.  There are all sorts of reasons one might want to make that effort, and some of those reasons are valid.  I'm just saying that it isn't a shield.  (The corollary principle, of course, is that anyone whose identity can't be verified shouldn't be trusted.  Accountability and credibility go hand in hand.  This is why I take all of FemaleScienceProfessor's wonderful and horrifying stories with a grain of salt.  If it's all true, then it represents a kind of shocking state of affairs in the social culture of the physical sciences, but unless/until I know who she is, I'm forced to be skeptical.)

While I agree entirely with the DC crew that academics shouldn't be afraid of blogging, and that they shouldn't fall back on anonymity or pseudonymity, I stopped agreeing with them when they recommended that academic bloggers stick strictly to a declared topic or purpose.  I see what they're getting at--if you want this to be a part of your professional portfolio, you should stay on message.  Not only that, but even as blog-positive as I am, I definitely think there's a line to cross, and I've read plenty of weblogs and online journals where I can't help but wonder if the author really understands that he or she is writing in public, and that they'll inevitably be read by their parents, or students, or new friends, prospective employers, complete strangers, coworkers, -anyone-.  So I understand the advice to think before you post.

I think there are different ways to think about blogging, though.  Different ways to conceptualize the process.  I have a lot of respect for the topic focused weblogs, and I'll freely admit that they're the safest choice for academics who are concerned about repercussions of public writing.  When I think about what kind of weblog I'd like this to be, though, when I think about the ones I enjoy reading, the ones I'd like to have as models, I'm never drawn to the strictly topic-focused.  Two of the standouts, to my mind, are Timothy Burke and jo(e).   The latter is almost exclusively personal--even when she writes about teaching, it's about the personal moments.  (She's also a good example of someone who I think is doing the right thing by blogging pseudonymously--it doesn't seem to be about obscuring her own identity so much as giving a little privacy to her children.)  I don't want to bring my personal life so much into focus, but I do love how she writes.  Burke, though, does a great job of engaging in academic discourse while still giving the reader a sense of the person behind the website. 

Those of you who've been reading my online writings for any length of time know that I've gone through all the extremes of comfort and discomfort with this project.  What keeps me coming back is the sense of community, and the sense of dialogue.  I keep this site going because I persist in believing that it can be a part of a conversation.  Weblogs and journals that are narrowly topic-focused often feel to me like they're coming from a position of authority, not of conversation.  (The exception to this is the topic-focused group weblog.  Daddy Dialectic, for instance, is a group of fathers who are all using the group blog to explore issues related to parenting, and they're a great read.  Likewise Body Impolitic, Laurie Toby Edison and Debbie Notkin's weblog.)  I don't want to be an authority here.  I have other venues open to me that are better suited to speaking from authority. 

Comments

[Jeremy Adam Smith]

Thanks for the kind words about Daddy Dialectic--I had no idea you read it.

I'm a writer and editor, not an academic--still, I work for and with academics at UC Berkeley. It's now standard procedure to google job applicants, and my articles, essays, short stories, and blogs are out there for all the world to see.

Last year, when I was applying for jobs and fellowships, my online work came up many times in the course of interviews--nearly always to my benefit. Once I applied for a fellowship and later discovered that the fellowship director had read the blog and even forwarded entries to her boyfriend...I didn't get the fellowship, but I think the blog actually helped, not hurt, my chances. Also, I suspect that my parenting blog convinced my current colleagues that I was a good prospect for the job, despite having little professional background in the areas we cover.

There are dangers. In Daddy Dialectic I have agonized over questions that range from the loneliness of daily caregiving to how many children to have to family leave policies--things that you're not supposed to discuss in job interviews and that indicate the importance of family that some employers might see as threatening to job commitment. I've also written about this stuff, and more, in essays that will be available online until the day I die.

I'm aware that my stated opinions, priorities, interests, and various mental states might undermine some job prospects. But I think I'm right to put family first and advocate for family-friendly workplace and public policy, and I don't want to work for employers who think otherwise. Of course, some day I might be desperate--but for now, I see it as a form of cultural activism.

But my science-fiction criticism and journalism actually pose a much bigger threat to job prospects, in some ways. I know that my voluminous writings on SF novels and movies give my colleagues pause, and I'm aware that there are people out there who don't take me as seriously because I think Battlestar Galactica, Marvel Comics, and Kelly Link are of enormous cultural importance.

I think in the end, you have to be yourself and you have to put your best foot forward, no matter what you write on. If you do intellectual work, the best defense against ignorant or prejudiced people is high-quality writing: a prospective employer may think science fiction is intrinsically puerile, but if you try to write about it in an intelligent and sophisticated way, only the extremely bigoted will not respect you for your work.

That, anyway, is what I would like to believe.

[Jessie]

Can you say more about the Wikipedia thing? I struggle with that all the time, because my students go there so fast and have a really hard time getting away from it. I try to structure the conversation around what it's good for (orientation, pointers to other sources, learning what's "common knowledge") and where it falls down (credibility, verification, perspective). But they still use it as a source in their papers if I don't specifically ban it. It feels like a weird blind spot in their ability to distinguish between different kinds of sources and I wish I knew how to teach it better.

[Susan Marie Groppi]

Jessie-- one of the best points I've heard made about Wikipedia, both on the DC podcast and elsewhere, is that our students are still going to be using Wikipedia long after they've left our classrooms, so the best thing we can do for them is try and teach them to use it well, rather than try and persuade them to not use it at all. Mills Kelly described an assignment he did with his World Civ students, where he had them write (or substantially rewrite) Wikipedia articles on topics related to the course, and then track changes to their articles over the course of the semester. I love that assignment, because it's a great kind of direct-action teaching. They'll learn a lot more about the benefits and problems of using Wikipedia, and they'll remember the lesson a lot better. I'm not quite at a point where I'm ready to do this as a primary assignment, but I'm seriously considering doing something like it as an extra-credit assignment in my premodern science lecture course.

The general idea, I guess, is that just resisting (or ignoring) the use of Wikipedia isn't doing ourselves or our students any favors. I've been more-or-less ignoring it in my classes. I usually mention that it's not a useful source of information for research papers, but that's just because Wikipedia (or other encyclopedia) articles lack the depth of information that they need for research papers. I may try and engage a little more actively with it this year. We'll see.