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Why Academics Should Blog

I’m taking a Media Theory course at Concordia in their Media Studies MA program, which involves a fair bit of reading. I’ve come to the conclusion that all academics should blog. Here’s why:

1. You need to improve your writing
I have never read such dismally bad writing as that which is prevalent in academia. Not all of it is terrible, but the stuff that is bad is just atrocious. It’s wordy, flabby, repetitive, and filled with jargony mumbo-jumbo. I realize that jargon is the very stuff that you work with and to the extent that you need your topic-specific jargon to make a point, then you should use it. But there is a whole other class of general academic mumbo-jumbo that you need to cut out of your writing right now. Go read Orwell’s rules, and then Strunk and White, and then we can talk about it again. Hint: utilize=use, militate=block, empower=mumbojumbo. You need lots of practice writing clear, good prose and saying what you mean. Blogging will help you get that practice.

2. Some of your ideas are dumb
The sooner you get called out on bad ideas, the better. Blogging has an almost-immediate feedback loop, and if you write a discipline-specific blog, then your colleagues around the world will read it (if they don’t then you are doing something wrong). That means that when you have a dumb idea, you should hear about it quickly, and you can then reconsider. When you have a good idea, you’ll hear about it; when you have an incomplete idea, and some others chip in with suggestions, you’ll get a better-formed idea. Etcetera.

3. The point of academia is to expand knowledge
If you believe that the reason academics publish is to expand knowledge, then expanding it beyond the few tens or hundreds of your colleagues that read the obscure journals you publish in should be a good thing. Your ideas should matter (if they don’t you should try to come up with some better ideas). If they matter then more people should know about them, and right now almost all your ideas are locked up inside the walls of journals, academic conferences, and university quadrangles. Set them free, and the good ideas will spread, be built on by others, and knowledge as a whole will benefit.

4. Blogging expands your readership
Cross-polination of ideas makes for a more healthy intellectual ecosystem, and blogging means that anyone, not just those in your discipline, will be likely to read your stuff. This includes other academics, as well as the rest of us (politicians, policy developers, artists, engineers, designers, writers, thinkers, kids, parents, and on and on). Anyone might have an interest in your work, or nuanced ideas about how it might be improved, or indeed thoughts on how your thoughts might improve their own thinking on a particular (perhaps nominally-unrelated) topic. More readers, from a more varied background, means your ideas will have a bigger impact.

5. Blogging protects and promotes your ideas
By blogging a new idea, you put your stakes in the (cyber)ground, with dates and readership to attest to your claim. When you blog, you’ve published, meaning people know you have published, and further meaning that a much wider audience – anyone with an Internet connection – can get access to your ideas. Which leads to the next point.

6. Blogging is Reputation
In blogging links are currency: your reputation is made by who links to you and how often. It’s a built in, and more-or-less democratic system of reputation as defined by interest. By having your ideas online, the value of your ideas (as reflected by who is interested in them) becomes immediately apparent. The academic/journal system works in similar ways, with Journal references as the currency. So you should be right at home.

7. Linking is better than footnotes
Linking is much better than a footnote. It allows your readers to visit your source material immediately (assuming it too is online), so again is likely to expand knowledge by giving readers direct access to the ideas that underpin your ideas.

8. Journals and blogs can (and should) coexist
Blogs and (online) newspapers exist in a symbiotic relationship: bloggers sift through and refer to newspapers, sending traffic to them. Newspapers now blog, and bloggers write newspaper articles. There is a general sense that blogging can be a bit more free-form, a bit less polished. While newspaper articles are more rigourous and final. Something similar should happen with blogs and journals. If academics blog, they can evolve and develop a series of ideas. When the ideas are clearer and polished, they can move on to be journal articles. But let’s get those journals online and free as well. Speaking of which:

9. What have journals done for you lately?

Journals define your reputation, and don’t pay anything. That’s like blogging. They are exorbitantly expensive, have abusive and restrictive copyright terms, and are not available online to the general public. You can’t link to them, and often you can’t find them. That’s unlike blogging. Journals should all be open access and free online (as newspapers have come to be), and you should tell them that, and choose to publish in open access journals whenever you can. It’s good for knowledge, and you are in the knowledge business. You should support whatever is good for knowledge.

33 Comments

  1. Chamika Chamika 2008-10-26

    I second this motion — I left grad school before getting my Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Montreal and completely agree with all the points you’ve made in this post.

    Academic writing for the most part is terrible and incomprehensible. Most academics are so trapped in the ivory tower that they haven’t even grasped the notion of the Internet, never mind using it to its full potential. Most academics I’ve met who are aware of the Internet scoff at the notion of the Internet as a “legitimate” medium. They tend to see it as a place for weirdos and ‘rabble’ where their precious poorly written ideas might be stolen.

    What I have never understood is how most of academics will wait for years to be published in some unknown “journal” read by 2 people (including the editor) instead of putting their ideas out there to be debated and push the discussion along.

    As an avid follower of your blog, I have to add that I really enjoyed your Public, Counterpublic and Web paper as well. Keep up the great work and good luck with your studies!

  2. Hugh Hugh 2008-10-26

    Heh… who knew I had avid followers! Thanks … ;-)

  3. miette miette 2008-10-26

    Do you have any idea how often I’ve wanted to say to someone wearing the blinders of academia:

    Some of your Ideas are Dumb

    ??

    A lot, that’s how many. Somewhere between Many and All The Damned Time, in fact.

    If each of us in the pedestrian world uttered that once a day to someone drenched in ivy (and vice versa, abso-bloody-lutely), maybe we’d all get along much better. And we’d all probably write much better to boot.

    Impressively stated, Hugh!

  4. Wobbler Wobbler 2008-10-28

    Nice post. Although I’m not very convinced with points 5 and 6, which are unfortunately rather important points, too. At least in terms of scholarly career building, which is important for many scholars.

    On point 5: You can change the time stamp of your blog posts. Particularly easy when you’re hosting your own blog or having it on free hosts. But more importantly: even if you can’t or don’t, I don’t see how that “protects” your ideas. Just because somebody blogged it doesn’t mean someone else can’t have the same idea. And even if they do plagiarize it, proving that will be difficult, if not impossible? On a slightly different note: is being “inspired” by what you read on blogs to carry out your own research considered plagiarizing? I’m not sure it is. On the upside, you might get a mention in the acknowledgements or even a reference. Not a bad deal if you were just throwing out a bunch of ideas to see which would stick stick just for the hell of showing that you’re creative. But if you’re interested or perhaps even working on something like that? That could turn out to be a bit of a sting then.

    As for 6: I think most scholars don’t really care about scholarly blogs. And it’s very difficult to build and maintain blog traffic for scholarly blogs, especially when one’s going for visitors and comments. The “quick & dirty” blog culture also work both ways “quick to create/access and quick to forget”. You’ll have to constantly update your scholarly blog if you want to maintain a good amount of visitors (and comments, which is even more difficult to build and maintain). And of course the updates have to be of “original” scholarly content, to stay “viable” for any kind of academic credit. After all, if you’re comparing scholarly blogging with journals, the contents have got to have something original/ significant, rather than scholarly blogging as another outlet of scholarly media i.e. another distribution channel. The latter is viable as well, but then you’re more a scholarly reporter/journalist rather than a scholar that wants to see some kind of recognition for scholarly works through blogging. But anyway, just my 2 cents.

  5. Hugh Hugh 2008-10-30

    “On point 5: You can change the time stamp of your blog posts.”
    HM: yes, but the wayback machine will catch you:
    http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

    “I don’t see how that “protects” your ideas. Just because somebody blogged it doesn’t mean someone else can’t have the same idea.”
    HM: sure. but by having launched an idea in a blog read by your colleagues, you’ve staked your territory, at least. Better than a journal? Maybe not.

    “On a slightly different note: is being “inspired” by what you read on blogs to carry out your own research considered plagiarizing?”
    HM: No, i would call that thinking!

    “As for 6: I think most scholars don’t really care about scholarly blogs.”
    HM: That’s because they don’t understand the internet. but to the extent that scholarly blogs are helpful to their work or interesting, then they should care.

    “And it’s very difficult to build and maintain blog traffic for scholarly blogs, especially when one’s going for visitors and comments.”
    HM: depends on how interesting they are – but I don’t think they should be “going for visitors and comments” … they should be trying to write thought provoking things, and engage in discussions with their reading. I do it and I’m not even an academic!

    “You’ll have to constantly update your scholarly blog if you want to maintain a good amount of visitors (and comments, which is even more difficult to build and maintain).”
    yes.

    “And of course the updates have to be of “original” scholarly content, to stay “viable” for any kind of academic credit.””
    HM:there’s no reason everything on your site should need to be viable for academic credit.

    “After all, if you’re comparing scholarly blogging with journals, the contents have got to have something original/ significant, rather than scholarly blogging as another outlet of scholarly media i.e. another distribution channel.”
    HM: journals and blogs should work in parallel, not in opposition. there need not be tension between the two, they serve different purposes (expect to the extent that journals tend not t be open access).

    “The latter is viable as well, but then you’re more a scholarly reporter/journalist rather than a scholar that wants to see some kind of recognition for scholarly works through blogging. But anyway, just my 2 cents.”
    HM: again, you don’t necessarily want “recognition for scholarly works through blogging,” you want a public place to explore your ideas.

  6. Wobbler Wobbler 2008-10-30

    ‘HM: yes, but the wayback machine will catch you:
    http://www.archive.org/web/web.php’

    Ah that’s a good point, I forgot about that particular site.

    ‘HM: sure. but by having launched an idea in a blog read by your colleagues, you’ve staked your territory, at least.’

    But that doesn’t really mean anything depending on what stage of a research one’s discussing. And if it was at a more final phase e.g. research done, writing the manuscript now, then it would make more sense to wait and just finish the manuscript to be deposited somewhere as preprint while waiting for the journal peer reviews etc.

    ‘Better than a journal? Maybe not.’

    Absolutely not. As I said, journals are the established scholarly communication model, while blogs are nowhere near that status (and will likely never be, concerning the functions that it must provide).

    ‘HM: No, i would call that thinking!’

    Then there is a reason to fear ideas being stolen.

    ‘HM: That’s because they don’t understand the internet. but to the extent that scholarly blogs are helpful to their work or interesting, then they should care.’

    I’m not entirely convinced they are. Assuming they will indeed discovery the internet, I’d find it more likely that they would make more/better use of the electronic access to (OA) journals and scientific news sites (like ScienceDaily). Those sources for “original” science are considerably more trustworthy/credible than going around finding scientific blogs by scholars you may or may not know. As for discussions, I personally don’t like them, but mailing lists seem to be pretty “in” when it comes to communicating scientific knowledge with fellow peers. I think there is a place for blogs, but that it doesn’t rank that high in comparison to the other sources (and rightfully so, from the credibility point of view). Also, we’re assuming scholars have a far more limited amount of time than the “random” internet goers to spend on acquiring scientific knowledge and discussing it.

    ‘HM: depends on how interesting they are – but I don’t think they should be “going for visitors and comments” … they should be trying to write thought provoking things, and engage in discussions with their reading. I do it and I’m not even an academic!’

    Oh sorry, I somehow read that you thought the amount of comments was one way to measure the reputation, but it’s incoming links. My bad. But assuming that all of the things I’ve said before are true: lack of time, lower priority slot for blogs i.e. other ways of going about this, more focused on researching it yourself rather than trying to get a discussion going, ideas being stolen, and there really aren’t many good reasons to actually do this. I think the closest thing that you’re looking for is blog networks like http://scienceblogs.com/. Which is actually a nice resource if you’re into scholarly blogging, but I don’t get the idea that they’re about posting a lot of original ideas/concepts rather than discussing what’s in the news already.

    So, well, I’m not sure. Personally, as I’ve said before, what makes blogging so attractive: quick and dirty = lack of consistency/structure and mostly about random personal concepts or news articles provided somewhere else, I’m not sure blogging is an efficient way to spend a scholar’s time.

    ‘HM:there’s no reason everything on your site should need to be viable for academic credit.’

    A lack of consistency will make it difficult, if not impossible, for any scholarly organization to assess the value of scholarly blogs and thus their deserved “reputation”. Such as amount of comments, or, as you say, links coming into the site. And a lack of support from scholarly organizations is another strong potential incentive lost.

    ‘HM: journals and blogs should work in parallel, not in opposition. there need not be tension between the two, they serve different purposes (expect to the extent that journals tend not t be open access).’

    If you’ve got (near) finished research, you’d want to submit it to journals for peer review. If you have ideas, you’d want to write them into formal proposals and submit them to grant funding organizations. Anything in between seems kind of dangerous to share with regard to the inability to protect it properly. Anything else is more like being another media distribution channel and a place to discuss those scholarly articles one would link to. Which is valuable, but nowhere near as valuable as getting another proposal/manuscript accepted.

    ‘HM: again, you don’t necessarily want “recognition for scholarly works through blogging,” you want a public place to explore your ideas.’

    Then your point 6 is rather questionable and I think, again, that the perceived value is likely overrated. On a related note, in cases like this I’m not sure to reply in one’s comment thread or start another blog post on my own blog as a reply. Either way, it’s not the best format to discuss things IMO. One more reason I find blogs (and mailing lists) overrated as a tool to facilitate discussion (unless the comment sections have a more forum like functionalities, then I’d be worth considering).

  7. Philip Melanchthon Philip Melanchthon 2008-10-30

    The Wayback Machine cannot catch me if I postdate my blog post from the get go to make it LOOK like I was the first person to write about a particular idea or to coin a particular phrase.

    You’re hoping that the date stamp on a post will act in the same way that registering a print item with the copyright office protected the primacy of the expression of an idea. I don’t think it will stand up in the courts, however, given the fluidity and impermanence of digital media.

  8. […] in your field, blogging may be a great way to start tossing about your own ideas.  See this list of reasons academics should blog from Hugh McGuire’s blog.  It might just inspire you to find or write your own academic […]

  9. Hugh Hugh 2008-10-31

    Fair point.

  10. Hugh Hugh 2008-10-31

    @wobbler: if not for my weblog & yours we would not even be discussing it. whether or not it’s the best method, it’s certainly a valuable one. I won’t reply point-for-point, but my main concerns are:
    a) open access to knowledge and
    b) enriching the public sphere of debate.

    having academics blog (in whatever kind of format that looks like) is a good way to achieve both goals.

    The academic system is not particularly conducive to open access, which I think is a systematic problem with academia. And to the extent that enriching the public sphere is a worthy mission for academia (which I think it is), then academia as a system should consider more ways to engage with the public. If they don’t wish to do so, that’s fine, but I am deeply opposed to an academic system that does not see one of it’s prime roles as the enrichment of the public sphere. The web is perhaps the most powerful tool for enrichment of the public sphere, and so I believe academia should fully engaged with the web.

    You’ve given plenty of reasons why academics are not fully engaged in the web, many of which have to do with systemic rewards for supporting a closed publication system; and systemic penalties for open discussion of ideas, except within the closed publishing/academic world. Which is more or less the main crux of my problem with academia, and most of which I would like to see changed.

    So: I understand why academics don’t blog. But I still think they *should*…in part because it is an easy way for to rattle the cage of “open” within a system that is for the most part closed to the public.

  11. Wobbler Wobbler 2008-10-31

    Hugh

    I understand what you’re trying to say. I agree that those are very good objectives and definitely worth striving for. There are already a number of “instruments” to make both Open Access and “Open Scholarly Discourse” a reality. The problem, however, is that it’s not just about providing the tools (e.g. blogs/wikis) and the desire to make them happen.

    The core issue, I think, is that there is only so much
    (1) space in (high profile) journals for publications,
    (2) money to fund grants to scholarly research
    (3) time for scholars to spend on research to qualify for (1) and/or (2).

    Scholars are different from other kind of “jobs” in that publications and funding are their ways of reaching a certain milestone and earning their pay check (other than teaching, conferences and whatever etc.). This is the “publish or perish” mentality. It’s important to remember that science is not just something scholars enjoy doing (I hope). It is also, and perhaps more importantly, a job. And just like any other job, there is a real need to be as productive as possible, i.e. in the most effective (e.g. significant/original) and efficient way possible.

    Which leads to two conclusions. The first conclusion is that accreditation for their work is a necessity. The second conclusion is that effectivity and productivity usually translate to at least having priorities and specific methodologies/ “best practices”.

    Look, for people like us, i.e. not real academics (I’m a master student in the process of finishing my master’s thesis), writing about science is fun and probably more like a way to kill time, if not a hobby. For them, it’s almost like work, and it takes away the time for them to do the work they really should be doing effectively and efficiently and receiving accreditation for it. Priorities are necessary.

    So to summarize: here’s why I’m hesitant to seriously consider these additional ways for scholars to communicate with each other: lack of accreditation. In addition, regardless of accreditation and necessity, blogs do not have a specific format for scholars to efficiently go over, like the journal paper format. Therefore, it is fun and practical in a small “club” setting, but highly impractical in larger settings because blogs simply don’t scale well. Concepts that have no style/ format/ structure hardly ever, if ever, scale well. I don’t get wrong: I love the web/IT concepts that the term “Web 2.0” represents and that includes blogging. But I have yet to see something that can functionally support discussions as well as forums. So whether the focus is on facilitating scholarly discussion and/or presenting (new) scholarly concepts, I think blogs are functionally and structurally coming up (rather significantly) short compared to forums and papers.

  12. Alexandre Alexandre 2008-11-01

    Nice list. I agree with most of these nine points and will probably reblog them (assuming you don’t mind). Some of these arguments are working with some academics, though many of them have counter-arguments which we may not want to ignore.
    A friend and former student of mine is doing his master’s degree research on blogging anthropologists and publishing. He’ll probably have opportunities to integrate some of these nine points in his work.
    Now, I must admit… Though I agree with these arguments, I have a hard time with the way they’re phrased. With all due respect, I think it’d be easier to convince academics if these were reframed a bit.
    The first one is probably the trickiest. I wholeheartedly agree that blogging is a very efficient way to practise writing. In fact, I’ve been telling students to blog for that very reason and my own blogging activities have helped me experiment with different styles.
    But the way this argument is phrased can be quite offputting to many an academic, especially those in social sciences and humanities whose understanding of language goes beyond the “football theory of communication” (“sending” and “receiving” information as if it were a football). These people are probably the ones who would benefit the most from blogging. But they might refrain from blogging because of statements like these. Especially since these are considered “old saws” in academia.
    Grice’s Maxims are pretty neat and all that, but they represent a fairly specific perspective on language which isn’t consensual among academics across languages and intellectual traditions. In fact, blogging may help show how “situated” this language ideology can be, especially if one thinks of diary-style blogging. A diary needs not be clear, concise, truthful, relevant… Furthermore, there’s value in inspiration, obscurity, ambiguity, playfulness, etc.
    Specifically about “jargon.” Fields differ in terms of how strongly practitioners value terminological freedom but, in general, most fields have field-specific meanings for words which may seem common otherwise and uncommon words often take field-specific currency. In context, there is a difference between “use” and “utilise.” Words like “empower” and “embody” are quite meaningful/significant because they embed large theoretical frameworks in a very efficient fashion while calling attention to dimensions of reality which may have been forgotten for a while. You may scoff at deconstructionism, but there’s a nugget of insight in fighting staid, prescriptive language. Fighting prescriptivism is a rare matter of consensus among language scientists.
    Yes, some words used by academics have to do with fads. But fads may be at the core of what Kuhn and Foucault have described as changes in “paradigm” and “episteme.” In fact, the presence of these words makes it easy to follow what Sperber has called “an epidemiology of representations.”

    None of this is meant to say that writing experiments through blogging aren’t valuable. Au contraire. Grokking the diversity of perspectives on writing among academics may be useful if one is to convince academics to start blogging.

  13. Hugh Hugh 2008-11-01

    @wobbler: “I think blogs are functionally and structurally coming up (rather significantly) short compared to forums and papers.”
    HM: Both of which are closed to the public. But out of curiosity, do you think academics should NOT blog?

    @alexandre: feel free to use whatever you like (of course!).

    Re: Point 1: There’s no doubt I will offend many academics who read this. Fair enough. But I am offended when I have to read such terrible prose as this:

    “The problem for liberals, thus, is how to strengthen the barriers separating political institutions that are supposed to instantiate relations of equality from economic, cultural, and sociosexual institutions that are premised on systematic relations of inequality.”

    (“Strengthen the barriers separating” is a terribly conflicted metaphor; what is doing the instantiating, the “barriers” or the “institutions”?; are “relations of equality from economic, cultural and sociosexual institutions” getting instantiated, or is it just “relations of equality”?; and what is the relationship between then between “relations of equality” and the “economic, cultural and sociosexual institutions” … etc etc.)

    What the writer is saying, badly, is something like:
    “The problem for liberals, then, is how to separate political institutions whose purpose is creation of equality, from other institutions that are built on systematic inequality (economic, cultural, sociosexual).”

    So I have, there, a problem with bad prose style which (unnecessarily) makes opaque relatively simple (though important) ideas, and hence blocks a more useful spread of knowledge. Or, as this writer would say, “occludes a more useful spread of knowleged,” or perhaps, “militates against a more useful spread of knowledge.”

    Now, you might say: “well this is one example, and not typical of academic writing.” To which I would reply, “It is frustratingly typical of the academic writing I have been reading.”

    Or you might say, “No you got the idea wrong, because you do not have a sophisticated enough understanding of the language the writer needs to use to make her point.” To which I would say: “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

    Again, I don’t have a problem with jargon when it is needed (as it is, by definition, in academic disciplines). I do have a problem with flabby, opaque prose, when it need not be either flabby or opaque.

    Is blogging the best answer to crappy writing? Probably not, but it is perhaps part of the answer. Or maybe I was just using blogging as an excuse to complain about shitty writing in academia. If academics reading this think I am wrong and that everything is fine and academic writing is filled with wonderful, lucid prose, then I hope I get to read more of that soon, and less of the bad stuff. If I am right, then … well? I hope I have not hurt too many feelings, and maybe some academics will consider more seriously the importance of writing clearly.

    And to repeat, my larger interest is academia being more present in the public sphere; something I think is important and valuable. If they are to be present in the public sphere, then they should present their ideas more publicly (for instance, by blogging); and should be more careful about their writing styles.

    As for point two, which also is likely to offend, I can give you many examples of dumb ideas that should have been nixed before they made it to papers, because they are just dumb. But this comment is already too long, and you’ll have to take it on faith, or you can disagree with me.

  14. Alexandre Alexandre 2008-11-01

    @Hugh I can’t really relate to either of the statements you propose as possibly coming from me. To be perfectly honest and blunt, but with all due respect, I think you’re focusing too much on writing (and academia in general) as being about “transmitting information.” There’s room for that model, especially in media studies, but it’s severely limiting.
    Some of my friends (English-speakers, all) share your distaste for what you call “bad prose.” Your attitude is easy to understand, well-known, and contextually legitimate. The main problem I see, though, is that it’s an application of “rules” from one domain (the “reporting” function of language) brought to another domain (academic writing, which has deeper epistemological implications than reporting language). To use an easy to find reference, it’s as if you were focusing on what Jakobson called the “referential” function of language and paid no attention to the other five functions (conative, phatic, emotive, metalinguistic, and poetic). Academic language, even in “hard sciences,” often emphasizes the metalinguistic, conative and, to a certain extent, poetic functions as well as the referential one. Even “reference” is often understood in relative terms (and Einstein’s relativity probably has a linguistic basis).

    To go back to your excerpt. Out of context, it probably did take me a few seconds more to parse than the “translation” you give. But, even without knowing anything about the original, I get a very different message in the quote than in the translation. For instance, “instantiate” brings about something very specific about the process at stake, calling upon the relationship between the general mode of action and the specific instance. Kind of parallel to “uttering” bringing about “utterance” in discourse analysis. “Relations” usually imply continuity, “instance” brings in the point that analysis separates out (artificially, perhaps) something within those relations. At least, to me. The rest of the text would probably help me figure out how the author perceives the purpose of the analyst.

    Yeah, I know, it sounds like I’m saying something similar to the second statement you thought I might make. But there’s a huge difference: I’m not presuming that the text is meant to denote univocally that absolutely needs to be understood clearly by an abstract yet expert reader.

    You say that point two might be offensive. You may be right but what might be offensive in it is the assumption that academics need to learn this despite the fact that one of the very bases of academia is that ideas need to be tested. In fact, it’s what peer-review is supposed to do. Blogging can be a very efficient alternative to peer-review if it’s framed properly. Use of words like “dumb” isn’t offensive but it’s quite offputting because it implies a perspective on intelligence which isn’t that conducive to academic research. At least, not in the way academic research has been practised during the last fifty years in Europe and North America.

    Again, you’re allowed to rant away about what you dislike about academic writing. Especially since it’s your own blog and you should do with it as you wish. The main thing I’m saying is that, as a fellow advocate of academic blogging, I’ve seen the detrimental effects of trying to convince academics by using what are perceived to be “tired old arguments” about academic writing and research.
    Again, no disrespect. I don’t disagree with you and I don’t take anything on faith. I’m just proposing a model which, I feel, has appropriate effects in terms of getting a blogging academe. The most efficient way I’ve found to make people change their ways is to understand what they’re currently doing in its proper context and show them how the context is changing.

    Specifically about blogging instead of journal writing: it’s useful to tell academics that blogging is a free and open form of writing, without strict editorial rules, not taking anything away from writing for academic journals. If you directly attack their writing style, they might clam up and refrain from ever presenting anything publicly. You don’t have to humour them and tell them that they’re writing is wonderful. But evaluating their work through criteria which seem inappropriate to them leads you on the very short path to communication breakdown.

  15. Wobbler Wobbler 2008-11-01

    ‘HM: Both of which are closed to the public.’

    Not exactly. Journals are becoming more and more Open Access. Then there are journals that have been Open Access from the start. And forums aren’t closed access. Pretty much anyone can open/manage a new forum. Perhaps the reason why there aren’t all that many scholarly forums is an indication that scholars are satisfied with their current way of discussing their works with their direct colleagues or otherwise through e-mail/mailing lists?

    Also, most of the blogging isn’t about the bloggers’ own original scholarly concepts but their views on scholarly publications and/or academic culture. So blogging isn’t necessarily the answer to pay-to-view journals, because people still can’t see the original articles. And those who have access have no real need to blog about them, because they can discuss it with their direct colleagues who also have access and/or share them privately.

    ‘But out of curiosity, do you think academics should NOT blog?’

    To be honest, I’m a little bit on the fence on this one. As I said, I think there’s a place for blogging. I just don’t think that it’s suitable for anything but what we take it for now: a rather effective but simple tool to enable discourse on a small scale. Mainly because it’s so easy to do: lack of a format, a structure and even the need to be as sound as possible. Anything else will make it become something it isn’t currently suitable for. Once we go big, I simply don’t see how scholars can blog seriously while making efficient and effective use of their time? And this obviously includes the (lack of) accreditation element.

  16. Hugh Hugh 2008-11-01

    Sure… but we can put “instantiate” back in, and then we still get a clear sentence, with the appropriate (and necessary jargon), but clearly conveying the idea:

    “The problem for liberals, then, is how to separate political institutions which instantiate equality, from other institutions that are built on systematic inequality (economic, cultural, sociosexual).”

    The problem is not the specific words, but the awkward construction of the sentence, and the clunky metaphor it starts with. I don’t think any old sentence will do, and I won’t be convinced that it will do.

    Now if you tell me, academics don’t write in order to be understood, that’s fine, I guess. But for all those other contexts for which they write, other than reference: I am precisely arguing that academics should start valuing clarity, and hence rewarding it socially/professionally etc. (What’s more: I suspect they do, and peer reviewers and editors probably cut up writing all the time in order to make it more clear). Poetic writing I am all for.

    As for metalinguistic problems, again, my fundamental point is that academia should strive to be a more visible part of the public sphere; the web is a powerful tool for engagement with the public sphere; hence, academia should engage more fully with the web. But if engaging with the public sphere is important, then their metalinguistic approach – some of it anyway – needs some shifting.

    [And, if I truly want academia to engage more fully with the web, yes, I should try harder to invite them in rather than attempting to shame them in].

    By the way, it is indeed curious that these kinds of objections come (anecdotally, anyway) only from English speakers. Certainly there is a cultural fetishism about clarity of thought and clarity of language in the English-speaking world; linked, I suppose, with the Anglo-Saxon obsession with getting things done.

    We could go on and on … ;-)

    [PS I assume everyone commenting here have respect ;-) … no need to assert it explicitly!]

  17. Alexandre Alexandre 2008-11-01

    @Hugh We seem to be getting somewhere!

    “Instantiate” was just one example (an “instance”). The sentence as a whole sounds clunky to someone who values clarity. But pretty much everything in that sentence makes sense and I’m not sure the author would prefer your “translation” to her original.
    Actually, the “translation” idea is quite useful. You want to transform “academese” into “Simple English.” Fair enough, if your native language is “Simple English” (represented by simple.wikipedia.org). Is it possible to judge somebody else’s language? Would you argue that I shouldn’t stop writing in French because English is better?
    BTW, the “clarity fetishism” of English-speakers has direct implications for me, as a French-speaker frequently living in French. Not that clarity never matters in French. But we tend to make it more contextual. Most of us are fine with Foucault, de Beauvoir, Bourdieu, Camus, Attali, Barthes, Lévi-Strauss, Derida, Sartre, and Piaget being somewhat difficult to parse, on occasion. And we do give a public role to intellectuals, since the Dreyfus Affair (just found out that this affair was the origin of the word “intellectual”). Our language ideology may have had something about rationality but we don’t put clarity on a pedestal.

    academics don’t write in order to be understood

    It’s one way to summarize it and it’s not that inaccurate. Academics don’t typically write with the specific goal of making everyone understand what they write. In fact, academics typically don’t presume that understanding comes from passive reading. Academics are typically experts at a type of writing which have diverse effects.
    One problem I was trying to point out about this blogpost is that it seems to presume that academics never think about their writing, that they’re sloppy, that they lack practise, that they need to be taught. Last time I heard something like this be tried as a line of reasoning, with academics, the effects were quite negative. The typical academic has written millions of words in her/his early career. Many of these words have been rethought and rewritten dozens of times. We spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about the ways we write, especially in humanities and social sciences. So, when we’re told that we don’t do a good job, we tend to react negatively.
    Most of us do value clarity in class. Those of us who care about teaching even make huge efforts to make sure most of what we tell our students can be understood by those specific students, even if this understanding only comes years later. We could conceivably write in the same way but this type of clear language is inappropriate for the type of formal academic writing which is so important for our careers (peer-reviewed articles and specialized books). This is probably one of the main reasons that most academic bloggers are blogging about teaching material and not about research material.

    Simply put, you make it sound like academics should be evaluated as if they were journalists. That might not get you very far in terms of persuading us to write more, online. My analogy would be that it’s like evaluating climbers with the same criteria as those used to evaluate distance runners. You may prefer distance runners. Climbers couldn’t care less.

    Yes, some editors do try to clarify some passages, on occasion. Part of this has to do with the fact that they’re labouring under notions which have to do with publishing, not with academia. One noted advantage of blogs is that they can be free from the constraints of the publishing world. Not something which is frequently discussed (since publishers mainly care about their business and take their language ideology for granted). But quite powerful.

  18. Hugh Hugh 2008-11-01

    I understand that academic writing is not for the general public; of course not, and academese (the overall language & the specific dialects) are part of the language with which academics converse. But I make a distinction between necessary academese and unnecessary academese. You might say, “Who are you to say what is necessary and what is not?” And I’ll answer: I am nobody. But each academic is responsible for how he or she writes. And in aggregate, academics & their writings (along with conferences etc) constitute academia. If they are pouring over their words countless times, writing and rewriting, then they are evaluating those words on any number of criteria.

    So: on an individual basis, I would plead with academics to consider clarity and elegance of writing as a laudable goal; perhaps to give it more weight in their analysis, as they pour over their work.

    If they don’t wish to do that, then so be it. I still think they should.

  19. Alexandre Alexandre 2008-11-01

    @Hugh
    Fair enough, especially framed in this way. It might just be a bit hard to persuade academics to both blog and eschew obfuscation through the same arguments. But your interest in both issues is well-taken and makes a lot of sense in this context.

  20. Hugh Hugh 2008-11-01

    Well, at least I could be more diplomatic about it than by telling them their ideas are dumb and they are terrible writers! ;-)

    But beyond that, I actually *am* reconsidering the question altogether; and I think that academics should blog for reasons different than my original 9, or at least modified from.

    My main interest is to enrich the public sphere with more knowledge from academia.

  21. rpg rpg 2008-11-17

    Hi Hugh

    late to the discussion I know, but… I’ve been meaning to link to this article, just not had a round tuit. Anyway, your reasons (and I *have* linked here) tie in nicely with the challenge that came out of the London conference.

    If any readers of your readers are keen to take up that challenge (got to be science-related, mind) then they should let us know.

  22. Sarah Stewart Sarah Stewart 2008-11-21

    Thank you all for a fascinating discussion. I am especially interested in the notion of blogging one’s research right from the beginning, when ideas are initially formulated. I hadn’t thought about it in terms of protecting one’s ideas. I am not 100% convinced it is a good idea, or at least, not initial funding is assured. But I am about to start this process on my blog and see how I go.

  23. […] blog, and it generated some intense debate and discussion, both on Huffington Post, and on my own weblog. I had nine points, which you can read, but the first two points were, er, indelicate critiques of […]

  24. Jan Husdal Jan Husdal 2009-05-19

    Thanks for an excellent post, and what a great discussion. I’ve been blogging or rather publishing my works online for many years now, but it’s only recently, nearing my PhD, that my blogging has turned serious. Some of your points are maybe a bit oversimplified, but, nonetheless, equally true, and definitely inspiring (or should I say: compelling) me to continue my blogging ventures.

  25. […] compelling idea or useful piece of information really make it more than worth it. There are tons of other good reasons, and ways, for academics to blog that other people have already blogged at great length about. […]

  26. […] compelling idea or useful piece of information really make it more than worth it. There are tons of other good reasons, and ways, for academics to blog that other people have already blogged at great length about. […]

  27. […] compelling idea or useful piece of information really make it more than worth it. There are tons of other good reasons, and ways, for academics to blog that other people have already blogged at great length about. […]

  28. […] this unreadability comes from the complexity of the material itself. To others, it’s a sign that academics are unskilled writers. In such a context, the increased readability of books which “aren’t too academic” is […]

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