[Air-L] WSJ

[Anders Sundnes Løvlie]

Cheers everyone, I hereby de-lurk.

I think this discussion is interesting, because this conflicted 
relationship between academia and the press is something I’ve personally 
experienced from both sides: As a journalist trying desperately to get 
scholars to speak in a manner which could be communicated to a general, 
non-academic public, and as an academic opening the newspaper and 
finding myself quoted saying exactly the opposite of what I thought I 
had said. Needless to say, both experiences are extremely frustrating.

Personally I thought the Post article was quite good, compared to most 
newspaper stories. Frankly I think academics should be happy whenever 
the general public takes an interest in our work, rather than complain 
about reporters’ lack of scientific accuracy. Scholarly precision and 
comprehensive elaboration is good for a lot of things, but not 
necessarily for reaching out to a wider public at their breakfast tables.

To prove my point, the controversy made me go back and read danah’s 
excellent blog essay to see for myself what all the fuss was about. I 
never got around to reading it before since it is a little on the side 
of my own field of research. Now I am glad I did, as I found it very 
interesting!

Looking at the popularity of certain local SNS's here in Norway, in 
particular among the youngest teens, I find myself asking whether 
language and culture barriers contribute to a similar effect to that 
which danah describes, in non-English language areas: Facebook for the 
older, higher educated crowd, and national SNS's for the 
younger/lower-class teens? Has anyone done research on that?

Regards
-- 
Anders Sundnes Løvlie
Research fellow
Department of Media and Communication
University of Oslo
(+47) 40 45 04 85
a.s.lovlie at media.uio.no
folk.uio.no/anderssl