I guess I agree with Bill: it's bad, but it could have been worse. It's hard not for the cheap retrenchment of stereotypical views of academia not to chafe, but I'm sure people in other fields feel the same way when they are covered. That said, three things are particularly troubling: First, there is an implicit criticism of our use of convoluted language. I think it is not uncommon for academic language to be unnecessarily complex, and so this is--broadly speaking--a fair criticism. Some scholarly work could probably be improved with a dose of journalistic writing. (This is not a veiled criticism of any single writer, and certainly not any of those quoted in this article.) I think we owe it to a wider public to write in a style that is as accessible as possible. But--and here's the rub--it should be as accessible as possible while still remaining precise. The problem with dumbing down the language, as journalists often do, is that it dumbs down the meaning as well. In that regard, journalists could take a page out of our book; when it comes to writing about complex issues, sometimes less isn't more. The real problem that the article turns on is one that often comes up in studying social phenomena: it seems strange to be so *serious* and use such *big words* about something as "trivial" as Facebook. If it were quantum physics, then sure, convoluted language would be expected, but social stuff is easy! I think we probably play into this when we talk to reporters because we try to simplify some of the issues to make their work easier. Maybe we should be making a concerted effort to be clear: the issues are complicated, and sometimes that is reflected in the way we write. It's unfortunate that Hesse took the easy path in this article, and played into the most obvious angle ("aren't academics odd?") rather than the more interesting "what appears to be just technological fashion might actually be a serious shift in how society works." Second, and as Barry already mentioned, she wrongly implies that co-citation among a group of scholars in a topic area is unusual or somehow incestuous, which belies a lack of understanding of how scholarly communication works, and passes this lack of understanding on to her readers. Finally, I am very bothered by the use of an anonymous "professor" to criticize the way danah works, both because it isn't clear whether the person said this, and it isn't clear who that person is. All of us should be open to criticism, and it's worth talking about how we communicate research to our peers. If a professor actually said this ("don't print my name because the cliquishness of academia makes it hard to criticize my peers publicly") , I don't think that he or she represents the ideals of our community very well. I don't know where the reporter hangs out, but "seething resentment" has never been an emotion I have associated with the scholarly world. I get it; it's journalism informed by MTV's "The Real World"--play up the conflict, and if it isn't there, manufacture it. But this kind of writing is more appropriate to the National Enquirer than it is to the Post. Seethingly, Alex On Dec 17, 2007 3:30 AM, Bill Herman <bherman@asc.upenn.edu> wrote: <snip>
Two points stick out for me. First, while I agree this piece was definitely not up to snuff (the comment that all of us save danah have so little expertise that a reporter could exhaust it for a newspaper story is just laughable), I'm scared to say that it may be better than most of what the print world writes about the internet. For starters, she actually looked up and cited something from the internet, including the author's name--unjustified mockery notwithstanding. <snip>
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