But yes, a university-affiliated blogging space might have some potential – although I think this would be most effective if it weren’t school-wide: so perhaps something could be established between faculty and student groupings who have some research interests in common, such that the blog might conceivably attract a readership. The school as a whole is too disparate (in our local case), I think, for a single blog to make sense (not that you were suggesting this – this is just the impression I got from the limited amount I know about the blogging concept being proposed).

Even here, though, I think there would need to be some serious discussion about whether, and to what extent, the university is truly comfortable with what blogging is: is it looking to showcase synopses of formal research? does it want academics to stick to their own specialisations? is it comfortable with discussion and debate? within what limits? etc.

But yes, in terms of my own blog: it’s the informality and hybridity of the medium that engages me, and the medium would no longer be useful to me, if this sort of informal exchange weren’t possible.

e – This is of course the issue that has prompted concerns over whether pre-tenured academics ought to blog under their own names. It’s a serious question.

Prior to starting this blog, I had generally participated in online discussions pseudonymously – mainly, to be honest, to conceal my gender, in order not to have to deal with petty harassment (not to mention the occasional out of the blue marriage proposal from European physics professors – but perhaps this latter experience was unique to me… ;-P).

It was a serious dilemma for me, when starting this blog, whether to attach my name to it. On the one hand, I always had some notion of putting my work up here (although I didn’t, at the outset, expect to be doing anywhere near so much thinking out loud on the blog), and it’s at best awkward to put up your own work pseudonymously. On the other hand… it restricts (although, again, probably not as much as I initially expected it to) what you publish, if it’s attached to your own name.

My initial compromise was to use my initials, and provide enough information that someone could figure out who I was if they were particularly determined, but not to provide any other identifying details. Then people started quoting me on other sites, and I felt stupid being quoted by my initials or by the website name, so I added the last name. Then I eventually outed the gender as well, because a discussion took place where I felt it was important. etc. And, as a community has gathered around this place, and as I’ve become active in a network of other blogs, various bits and pieces of background have entered the public sphere… So I’ve gradually peeled back layers of anonymity. There is material here that I wouldn’t be particularly thrilled to discuss in particular professional contexts, but the dividing line, for me, has been the question: “let’s say [worst case scenario person] reads this, and calls me in to discuss it, can I handle the fallout?” If the answer is “no”, then the post doesn’t go up… I probably answer “yes” more often than some other folks would – but, again, these are personal standards for how much flak I’m willing to take, if it comes to that – I don’t hold out what I do here as anyone’s ideal practice.

Without consideration of mood, or time at which it was written, etc, etc.

It is far easier for certain posts, critical of the university or cries of despair over the overall state of ‘the university’ to be ripped out of context and used as weapons to bludgeon bloggers.

My overall concern is also the amount of surveillance that can also be carried out by management within ‘the university’. While ‘openness’ sounds great, in theory it may also have other power relations/affects wrapped up in it.

I agree somewhat with a previous poster’s proposition of asking particular people to contribute to a school/faculty/university blog. But this does not remove all of the problems regarding temporality, the context of blogging, the largely informal nature of electronic communication mediums, and surveillance of workers. It does however seem to be at best an awkward compromise.

I would however be tentatively interested in having a really academic (in the sense of institutionally affiliated) blog other than my personal (mostly but not entirely) intellectual blog, perhaps as a means for sharing research, coordinating reading, etc.

I think there’s a sort of parallel between blogs and in person groups (reading and writing and discussion). I wouldn’t want university officials inviting people to my reading group and occasionally asking to sit in (with the expectation of being told yes). By the same token, I’d be more excited to be invited to a really good reading group than to take a really good class or attend a really good lecture or roundtable or similar thing, presuming content being roughly the same. Same deal w/ my blog and the blogs I most like. The informal quality is part of the attraction.

take care,
Nate

All that said, I’m inclined to agree that blogging, although it’s technically accessible to “everyone”, in practice heavily self-selects, at least for its regular audiences. This self-selection crosses many internal academic boundaries, and some of the boundaries between the academy and other intellectual spaces, which is one of the reasons the medium can help people to stretch out a bit, but the element of self-selection – of people looking for, and lingering in, online communities in which they have some sort of ongoing interest – is also part of what makes the medium useful: even where there isn’t sympathy, there is at least a level of long-term familiarity that makes certain kinds of high level intellectual exchanges possible. And, of course, also provides a context in which less intellectual moments within blog conversations can be situated…

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I’m concerned, as well, about how posts and conversations could be taken, if lifted out of their communal context. I recognise, of course, that there is always some chance that this might happen – that anyone in principle could stumble across what I write here, or deliberately set out to trawl through the archive. And I’ve obviously decided that I’ll deal with those situations if and as they arise – that the value of the medium, to me, is worth these sorts of risks. I just think misunderstandings are far more likely to take place, and also far more likely to have some impact on the university, if something from here is featured under a university banner in some way.

On a more mundane level: I was noticing that the banners SEK linked to said something like “blogging about peer reviewed research”. I actually rarely do that here… ;-P Almost never, in fact. Although what I eventually submit for peer review has been and will likely continue to be based on concepts that I played with first around here. So if the standard were that I might push across content for a university blog that related directly to peer reviewed material, this actually inverts the order in which I use the blog for my personal research.

(It’s funny: I was approached a while back by a group of folks who circulate their research with one another privately prior to publication, asking if I’d like to join them. I responded by saying that I was happy to be cc’d on material on which they thought I could reasonably comment, but that I would be unlikely to circulate my own work in that context, as I already have an established community here where I seek out feedback. One response was that I could use the group for material that wasn’t “ready” for the blog. Somewhat to my embarrassment, I had to admit that I’m not… er… that selective about what goes up here – I’m not sure, at this point (early on, it would have been very different), that there is much content that I would consider unsuitable for the blog – I do an enormous amount of thinking on the fly here: if it can’t be written for the blog, there’s a really good chance I’m just not ready to articulate it in written form – in which case, I then pick on members of the reading group who can be made to listen to me in person… ;-P)

In any event: I haven’t yet received a response to my email expressing some of my concerns about the project. Too early to tell whether this project will go anywhere, in its proposed form or some other…

Still, the endeavor as you’ve described it doesn’t seem fully or particularly well thought out. It’s not the first time that a well-intentioned institution has considered tapping into the latest technology to demonstrate and take advantage of the fact that they’re up to date with the ways people are now communicating with one another. But this can backfire, a bit: the kind of rawness, as you say, and occasional misunderstandings that occur in conversation are what gives blogging at its best its immediacy and vitality, but may not provide the best resources for institutional self-promotion. It’s these quasi-conversational elements, I too worry, that might disappear a bit when even a well-constructed, deliberately crafted post is taken out of the sometimes speculative and ruminative contexts in which they were generated and presented as an example of the institution’s stock of expertise, however expert the post may be.

I suspect your blog attracts the reliable readers it does not only because of the topics covered but because of the erudition, elegant prose, and good manners – all carried out even in the context of struggles with difficult material. But as you suggest, neither the material nor the medium may be for everyone, and I’m not sure purposes of communication or understanding are served by choosing a post here or there for public consumption. Even a labeling or badge system doesn’t remove this problem, at least as I can imagine it: does this one get the star, but not that? Hm. Everything here seems of a piece. This may not hold true for other kinds of bloggers or bloggers, though, so for them participation in such a project may be more congenial to and consistent with their own understanding of what they are up to.

That said, I still feel that academics may serve their institutions better by keeping their blogging activity just a bit in the shade (though perhaps not the full depths of darkness, where Kauders seems to like it!) – a public corner of private exploration, or is it the other way around? If a university wants its bloggers to show off their expertise, they should create an on-line magazine and have them take turns guest blogging on specific topics, for specific purposes. That’s my off-the-top suggestion, at any rate.

Although my bigger worry, obviously, is that it might not have been thought through, whether the university wants to “brand” the sorts of discussions that take place in settings like this…