Is it an "academic blog" just because it says it's an "academic blog"?

I apologize in advance for the inevitable bug-related squirming.


The three blogs that I read varied significantly in regards to how academic their content was. It made it more difficult for me to qualify what an academic blog is. And in my own person opinion, some of these supposed academic blogs seem more like social blogs with an academic article or two than like an academic blog with some additional flavor.
The first blog I read was “Bug Girl’s Blog” and this blog seemed far from academic. This website combined mostly an irrelevant potpourri of information and a few scarce remarks about bugs. For a scholar who has a doctorate in entomology, she clearly talks less about the field where she is respected in and more about societal commentary.
There are a few points, however, where this blog is unique and great for the reader. First, she immediately establishes her credibility as an entomologist by listing her degree and previous academic work in the “About Bug Girl” section. Second, she adds a lot of comedy to her blog, which I always thought disqualified a blog from being academic, since most academic studies are serious. Additionally, she grabs everyone’s attention with a multitude of ‘unique’ images. The first image I saw when I logged on to her blog was a picture of a woman sitting down with her butt crack showing. That seemed to pop out to me and say “wow, why is this here,” which is what caused me to continue reading it. As you continue down the page, there are pictures all over the place, ranging from an exquisite bug to a kung-fu scene. Once again, this unique combination helps to draw the reader, but also makes the reader question the academic validity of the blog.
The second blog that I read was “Crooked Timber.” This blog was the exact opposite in almost every fashion from “Bug Girl’s Blog.” It is dry, academically verbose and superficial, and barely uses the internet to influence how he presents this media. On the entire front page of this blog, there is only chart and one video: no pictures and no other non-prose media. This makes it much more boring to read than the previous blog. However, this blog does have more academic discussions and analyses than the other blog. The writers do try to spice things up on this blog by using spicy phrases such as “political scientists are pretty damn hot in comparative terms.”
Finally, the last blog I read was the one by Josep Colomer. On this blog, Colomer combines political science analysis with current events and analyzes each through the other’s lens. This intertwining keeps the reader interested, while providing academic information. We can all read and understand media reports, but Colomer’s writing enables us to understand how what the media is reporting applies to his academic field (comparative politics). Additionally, Colomer establishes his academic credibility in the brief biography on the side of his blog (furthermore, I know he is credible since one of my political science textbooks is written by Colomer). Also, by serving as a comparative politics specialist, he gives the laymen American a unique perspective to modern day news stories.
Finally, his blog is more visually bland than the bug blog, but not as bad as “Crooked Timber.” He uses very few pictures, and the ones that he does use aren’t very exciting. However, he does embed many links on his website, which does increase the “new” part of new media.
Thus, these three blogs all try to be academic in different ways, but I would only classify the latter two blogs as academic. The first blog just does not seem serious enough and germane enough to an academic field.