Social Media for Academics

A Practical Guide

Diane Rasmussen Neal

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781780633190
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book provides an overview of social media technologies in the context of practical implementation for academics, guided by applied research findings, current best practices, and the author's successful experiences with using social media in academic settings. It also provides academics with sensible and easy strategies for implementing a wide spectrum of social media and related technologies - such as blogs, wikis, Facebook, and various Google tools for professional, teaching, and research endeavours.

• No other book exists that assists academics in learning how to use social media to benefit their teaching and research
• The editor has an extensive background in social media teaching, consulting, research, and everyday use
• All the contributors come to the book with a common goal, from various expertise areas and perspectives

Part I

The nuts and bolts of social media for academics

1

Blogging your academic self: the what, the why and the how long?

Carolyn Hank

Abstract:

Blogging emerged as a novel channel for communication, but considering the ubiquity of blogs today, the idea of this channel being ‘new’ seems, well, a bit old. Blogs are everywhere, and the blogs of scholars are no exception. It might be more accurate to think of the form as evolved, since informal modes of communication are a staple of academe. This chapter is intended to benefit those considering personal blogs for communicating their own scholarly works and ideas, highlighting motivations to blog, rewards from blogging and tips for getting started. It is also intended to benefit those in the early majority already blogging, as both a refresher and confirmation of blogging strategies and benefits, as well as a twist – presenting issues and tips in regard to blog access and availability, both now and into the future.

Key words

web blogs

scholarly communication

benefits

preservation

back-up

Introduction

Many blogging academics report a wide variety of motivations to blog. For many, it is to quickly communicate their ideas and research to wider audiences than might be possible through formal publications, like the peer-reviewed journal article or (conveniently enough) the book chapter. A variety in motivation is coupled by variety in academic bloggers’ topical treatments, styles and approaches. And it gets to a bit of the challenge (and a bit of the fun) in discussing the blogs of academics. The blogosphere is immense. Technorati (2011), the largest blog directory in the world, indexes nearly 1.3 million blogs. While there has been much anecdotal reporting on academics’ adoption of blogs, available across a range of disciplines, no exhaustive, complete inventory of academic blogs or bloggers exists. The sheer size of the blogosphere does not lead to simply a ‘needle in a haystack’ scenario. Considering the variety in academic blogs and bloggers and the low barrier of entry for publication, it is more akin to a chameleon in a haystack. Blogs are added, deleted and forgotten on a daily basis. Lifespans vary, from blogs that are active – added to, modified and maintained – for mere days or weeks, to blogs remaining active for years.

Scholars in the blogosphere

Several neologisms have emerged to describe academics in the blogosphere, such as bloggership (Caron, 2006) and the blogademia (Saper, 2006). Consider some of these fairly straightforward titles, taken from a directory of academic blogs: ‘Information Processing’; ‘Quantum Quandaries’; ‘Discursive Philosophical Thought’; and ‘Finance and the Public Interest’. Now, how about these: ‘Eat the Dogs: On Science, History, and Exploration’; ‘Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, Steamboats are Ruining Everything’; and even, ‘Another Boring Academic has a Blog’. Following our primary school advice to not judge a book by its cover, we might also want to resist judging an academic’s blog by its header.

While no comprehensive inventory exists, there are ways to go about identifying blogging academics. You could simply visit departmental and individual faculty websites and have a look around. However, considering that blogs have diversity in form, styles, topicality and audience, identification as such may depend on navigational and identification clues provided by the blogger or host, or you may have to interpret for yourself whether it merits qualification. There are some tell-tale hallmarks of the medium. Blog posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order and support a range of object types and formats, including text, images, audio and video. Content published to the blog may be original to the blog or represent work originating elsewhere. Blogs support interactivity, such as through a commenting system and trackback features. They typically also support access controls to further refine interaction scenarios, such as password protection mechanisms.

In seeking out the blogs of academics, there is also a ‘birds of a feather’ effect. Have a look at an academic blogger’s blogroll. More often than not, this will lead to another academic’s blog (and another, and another, and so on). However, to take a more systematic approach to understanding the extent of blog publishing by academics, two important sources are academic blog directory listings and networks of scholar blogs. Networks are distinguished as an aggregate of blogs at one location that are typically organized by topical treatment or institutional affiliation, and, also typically, are organizationally-sponsored, such as by a publisher or a university. Just a few examples include the Law Professor Blogs, the Scientific American Blog Network and ScienceBlogs. Blog directory listings provide an index of academic blogs compiled for various reasons, such as topical treatment. For example, the Fourth Annual ABA Journal Blawg 100 is a listing of legal scholarships blogs, or blawgs, of merit (McDonough and Randag, 2010).

With all of these blogs, who are these academic bloggers then? The academic bloggers responding to my own study were found across all levels of professional age, real age, faculty rank, tenure status and publication and service history (Hank, 2011). The majority were tenured faculty, employed at the associate professor rank or higher. Nearly all blogged under their real names rather than pseudonymously. So, have a look around, as an academic blogger may very well be your colleague across the hall.

Motivations and benefits

Returning to motivations, two commonly reported are the sharing of professional experiences and ideas with peers and the general public, and to foster and build networks among an audience of readers, both the known and the unknown. Academics’ blog posts and topics may not relate exclusively to research, teaching and service. Just as motivations to blog are not mutually exclusive, nor is blog style, as found by White and Winn (2009). Bloggers tend to identify their blogs as both personal and professional.

When considered within the system of scholarly communication, an obvious question is whether a blog is a publication or, worded another way, does it qualify as scholarship? In my own study, eight out of ten scholars felt their blogs were a component of their scholarly records (Hank, 2011). Further, nearly seven out of ten scholars agreed that their blogs satisfied the parameters of scholarship for ‘unpublished scholarly outcomes and publications’, identified by Braxton et al. (2002) as ‘public, subject to critical review, and in a form that allows use and exchange by other members of the scholarly community’ (p. 141). Blogs can also be seen to be a link in a chain of scholarship and communication. A majority of respondents to my study reported that their blogs led to invitations to publish, present, provide service and collaborate.

Impact was also felt in other ways. A majority of scholars in my study felt their blogging had a positive impact across different aspects of their scholarly lives, including:

1. their creativity in examining research in new ways;

2. the overall quality of their research;

3. the quality and efficiency of their writing;

4. the quality of their teaching; and

5. their ability to share pre-publication materials with colleagues.

Further, nearly all respondents reported that blogging contributed to their enjoyment of their work as a scholar and improved visibility (Hank, 2011).

The one aspect of scholarly life that respondents did not feel improved as a result of their blogging was opportunities for promotion at their respective institutions. However, their blogs also did not impair these opportunities. Most felt that their blogs had no impact in regard to promotion. Several offered strategies, gained from personal experience as well as the experience of peers, for presenting blogs when up for tenure or review. The first was to emphasize the blog in regard to the requirement for service. The second was to apply Google Analytics, or a similar tool, to demonstrate the audience and reach of your blog (if you think it is demonstrable enough to show favourably on you). And third, it was recommended that one quantify invitations resulting from blogging. While these can be categorized, as mentioned earlier, to publish, present, serve and collaborate, specific examples of these invitations and resulting activities and publications might include:

Publishing: for example, monographs, textbooks and chapters; peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers; other scholarly papers and essays; commentary and opinion pieces; book reviews.

Presenting: for example, keynotes and plenary sessions; conference panels and paper sessions; workshops and tutorials; guest lectures.

Service: for example, professional association leadership roles and committees; conference committees; editorial boards; peer-review.

Collaboration: for example, research projects, grant monies; count of collaborators, including institutional affiliations and geographic locations, if different from your own.

Blog publishing: getting started … or getting more

While academics either new to blogging or considering starting a blog might be a bit hesitant joining this late in the game, late is not ‘too late’. Blogging isn’t going away just yet. Approximately six out of ten scholars blog about the same amount of time or more compared to when they first began to blog (ibid.).

The growth in blogging is attributed to many catalysts, one being the availability of free, easy-to-use blog publishing and hosting services. There are a range of publishing and hosting options, from application- or hosting-only tools and services to application and hosting se...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• About the editor
• About the contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: The nuts and bolts of social media for academics
• Part II: Putting social media into practice
• Index