Conversations [Example Two]

Finally getting around to Jean, yet my week of conversation is nearly done.  Jean was also a speaker at the First Person: International Digital Storytelling Conference.  A post on her blog (reproduced below) reflects her thoughts on weblogs as valid, academic research forms. 

Jean’s post is in response to ideas raised by three academics on their blogs.  One of those blog posts is from Jill Walker. An extract from a book by Walker and Mortensen propelled the sallyb blog project in the first place and connects most of the ideas and people mentioned throughout this weblog ‘assignment’.  

The network of blogs (the blogosphere), with a plethora of themes, ideas and reflections, provides the opportunity to debate issues, challenge systems and contribute to a ‘mass’ media without gatekeepers. 

 

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Blogging for credit?

March 5 2004

Sebastien Paquet wonders, along with Andrew Chen, Jill Walker, and Professor Bainbridge about the benefits of research blogs as opposed to formal academic publication. I don’t quite see why it’s an either/or situation – for me, a research blog is a thinking, talking, networking tool and a shared interest magnet; academic publishing is a more rigorous (but far slower) way to disseminate concrete findings and test well-thought out arguments – and of course, formal publication is an absolutely essential CV building exercise.        

The question in most of the above discussions is whether the public engagement, reflexivity, and contribution to current or emerging knowledge that come out of blogging should be CV-builders too. Perhaps, as others have said, in these ways blogging is analagous to giving conference presentations. I think that genuine research blogging should be a recognized part of each individual’s overall research profile. It isn’t entirely clear how something parallel to the peer review process can be shown to have taken place – but I think that weblogs could easily be asessed for quality (in terms native to the web, not to the print journal) and weighted accordingly. Sadly if this shift does take place, it won’t be soon (ah, but when I run the world…).

 

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