The Blogging of Academics (or the Academics of Blogging)

If we didn't invent computers, this little fella would be about ten minutes away from being a quill that we would use to hand-write our logs (its like a blog without the b)!!

Blogging is something that cannot be described or defined. While still being social, blogs are personal and vary from each person to the next. Blogs should not be graded or critical of the writer. Because of the individuality of each blog, no one set identifier can be applied to the field of blogging. These were all my preconceptions about blogging coming into this class. Almost every article we have read, though, completely contradicts this. And while some of these opinions have altered my opinion on some of these points, I am still hesitant to completely change any of these opinions.

Since the first time that I had heard about blogging, I had always desired the enjoyed appeal of each blog. I have always had strong opinions, but never a place to vent them; but now blogging provided the forum for me to do this. By providing me a unique place to express my opinions, it made me always right. Even grammatical errors were correct, because they were part of my writing on a forum that was exclusively mine. This, I have come to realize, however, only applies for social and/or personal blogs and not academic or journalistic blogs. Since those types of blogs need to earn legitimacy, they are still bound by the standards of academic conduct: notably legitimacy, validity, and credibility.

Blogs are a relatively new technology and have grown significantly since their advent over a decade ago. That summarizes the entire Economist article in one sentence. Since this article was so basic and could be contracted as such, it provided no real substance other than a basic overview of the history of blogging. So while this article may be legitimately journalistic, it is probably not academic because it adds no new substance. So what then distinguishes an academic blog: information and credibility.

An academic blog must provide some sort of insight, whether unique or not, about whatever topic it is about. It must teach the reader something new. And the second aspect is credibility. An article must be factually accurate and gain a reputation, much like a newspaper. This still provides a buffer zone for what qualifies as an academic blog.

As noted by the Sullivan article, political blogs are an important part of this debate. One example would be my.barackobama.com. Designed by the creator of Facebook, this website was the social network tool for the Obama presidential campaign, and one facet of this campaign was blogging. Anyone could blog on this website, which made it more of a social blog than an academic blog. But legitimate academics also blogged on this website in an attempt to advocate competing policy positions. Since this site was so new it was impossible to establish academic credibility; however, since many of these bloggers had academic credibility before blogging on this site, their academic credibility may have transferred. But who is to judge? That is the ultimate question, and in the realm of the blogosphere, it is yet to be answered.