[Air-l] Reactions to PhD blogs at conference

Tue Oct 3 21:14:46 PDT 2006

It *was* fun, Radhika, although I didn't realise how much was going on
in the audience as I was giving the paper. I had my own word count
obsession going on so I could finish in 15 minutes! 

For those of you interested in the project from which my paper developed
- a project which looks at the impact of new media technologies on
workplace culture and identity - a couple of other pieces I've written
deal with some of these issues and in that sense the audience reactions
don't really surprise me. 

In terms of the emotional responses - of laughter, of shock, indeed of
horror that people would want to blog so openly about their lives and
their research - these  fall in line with the reactions I've seen
amongst many senior academics who see (junior faculty) blogs as simply
narcissistic, or in the words of someone I was talking to last week,
'like watching a soap opera'. This reaction overlooks the range of
blogging styles that exist, which is part of the reason I wanted to
start a very specific taxonomy. It also underestimates how blogs can
generate traditional academic outcomes (or at least, very full
conference sessions). 

But I also think an older generation of academics might be resistant to
the very social aspects of blogging, but particularly its temporality
(this is what blogs share with email lists). Blogs' capacity to archive
thinking-in-progress can be confronting for academics who see
scholarship as generally a solitary pursuit that is counted by
'polished' end results - published articles, books, etc. that go through
layers of editing and checking. Perhaps that is what scholarly'ness' has
always been, and perhaps they are right to defend it.

In 'Feeling Ordinary: Blogging as Conversational Scholarship', a paper
from an earlier conference panel Jean and I did together, I describe
blogging as the latest development in a wider history  of 'recreational'
scholarship that takes place outside, and alongside, institutionalised
modes of academic scholarship. In this sense it should not be seen as a
threat: it doesn't compete with, so much as complement, existing forms
of academic practice. The PhD bloggers are still 'invested' enough in
the scholarly ideal to want to get a PhD and a tenured job. That's
what's interesting.

In terms of the 'Do these people have kids?' question, my chapter in the
Uses of Blogs book launched at AoIR makes significant mention of the
amount of time involved in maintaining a blog (and that the unequal
amount of childcare/homemaking is still a big factor in the ongoing
debates about 'where are the women bloggers?' on A-lists). This has real
overlaps with Jean's paper on Flickr dynamics when she discussed the
implicit 'rules'/ethics of online presence - updating and maintaining
presence is key to participating 'properly' in the subculture.

Like Mary-Helen, I really welcome more thoughts on these issues on or
off-list.
Cheers
Melissa 

Dr. Melissa Gregg
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies
and
Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies 
School of English, Media Studies and Art History
The University of Queensland QLD 4072
CRICOS provider number: 00025B

phone    61 7 3346 9762
mobile   61 4 1116 5706
fax    61 7 3365 7184

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of radhika gajjala
Sent: Wednesday, 4 October 2006 12:04 PM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Reactions to PhD blogs at conference

all sounds like so much fun....

r

>Mary, Denise and other AoIR-ers
>
>I was another one who laughed during Mel's presentation. I was also one

>who was interviewed for Jean's Flickr presentation and am glad she 
>picked someone else's family room to illustrate how we Flickr folks 
>live. ;) (She did take a photo of mine.)
>
>Knowing that was Jean's blog with the word count obsession post, 
>knowing her sense of humour, and knowing she is due to submit her 
>thesis shortly, I happily laughed and kept laughing even when she said 
>"it's not funny". Jean is also an editor and would be enforcing word 
>counts for other people all the time, so there is that side of it too.
>
>I agree with Denise's comment about the fonts. They can be so 
>expressive. Clancy Ratliff's "Culture Cat" blog on Rhetoric and 
>Feminism used to have a wonderful retro font called "Beauty School 
>Dropout" for the title. (I'm into fonts so I know things like that.) I 
>don't know why Clancy changed it. (Culture Cat is no longer a PhD blog 
>so Mel didn't present it this time.)
>
>Mary it is a pity you had to catch that flight and couldn't be there 
>for the whole session. It was the liveliest session of all that I went 
>to, and afterwards as we broke up into conversational groups to leave 
>the room, the pitch of the conversation was more like a party than a 
>conference. I don't think there was any animosity.
>
>Pam
>
>Pamela Rosengren
>Graduate Student, Internet Studies, Curtin University of Technology
>
>
>
>
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--
Radhika Gajjala
Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator School of Communication
Studies
302 West Hall
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43402
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik/index2.html

For queries about  
BGSU's School of Communication Studies
Grad program, email comsgrad at bgsu.edu

For info on the Theory Research cluster at SCS - see
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