On academics and blogging

The Lowy Interpreter currently has a bit of a debate going on the topic of academics and blogging.

The central question is why academics, especially in Australia, blog so little. Respondents have suggested several reasons: lack of time, too much institutional focus on the peer-reviewed track, lack of comfort with a medium that often seems geared to quick-fire ideas rather than carefully considered output, and so on.

I identify to a certain extent with all of these (especially the time thing…), but I’d like to suggest a couple more, based on my brief experience doing SEAview.

Firstly, some of us are still fundamentally ambivalent about profile, and find it hard to predict the ratio between time expenditure and returns. In other words, we think we have something to contribute, and we want to be heard, but we’re not sure what level of visibility to realistically aim for. Clearly, we don’t want to be invisible, or what’s the point? But there is a lot of work involved in becoming highly visible – and then in managing that visibility. For example, to really get the most out of your blog (in terms of feedback and conversation-starting), you need to build a presence (linking to Facebook, Twitter, newspaper articles, etc). Or you need to organize to work as part of a team. All this requires even more investment from those limited supplies of time and energy already mentioned – which is why, in my case, it hasn’t been done. How much do you invest when the return is uncertain?

Then there’s the question of stance. In an academic environment, I guess most of us are not particularly used to being pundits. Of course, all lecturers and tutors have a particular line – there’s no such thing as totally objective teaching. But students are not there to hear a political sermon. They want to be exposed to the map of ideas that politically, historically, and culturally contextualizes a particular debate – in other words, they want the tools and scaffolding to form their own opinions, not a weekly digest of the lecturer’s or tutor’s opinions. I’m not saying you can’t do this kind of spectrum-mapping exercise via blog posts. But it’s not easy.

And finally there’s the whole big question of how to blog well. I’m very aware that my own blog has oscillated between opinion pieces and updates, and between long discussions and short comments. The opinion pieces are inspired by those aaaaaargh moments, while the updates stem from the practical consideration that a blog can kill two birds with one stone by providing another way to manage updates... There probably shouldn’t be this variation. The blog should probably pick a style and stick to it...

Ideas, anyone?