Re: [Air-l] Reactions to PhD blogs at conference
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@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of radhika gajjala Sent: Wednesday, 4 October 2006 12:04 PM To: air-l@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
_______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association
of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- 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@bgsu.edu For info on the Theory Research cluster at SCS - see http://scs.bgsu.edu/Research/ResearchClusters/theory.php _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
I really enjoyed this panel and Melissa's paper on academic blogs. My sense of the laughter was more recognition of our own experience than hostility. And yeah, a little envy from those of us who aren't labelling ourselves "bitch" on our blogs though we might at times feel that way (I used to fantasize about an anonymous blog called 'the angry professor' where I could post all the aggravating emails students send -- like "I wasn't in class today, can you tell me what I missed?"). Regarding the PhD student/older academic split Mary-Helen alludes to, I guess I now qualify as the latter, and my sense sitting in there was that the PhD students might be romanticizing what it was like back in the old days. I don't recall a world where writing a dissertation caused no stress, where we were assured of rewarding academic employment, and so on. It was hard then too, we just didn't have blogs to share the experience. That said, one of the interesting things I got a little bit of a feel for in Brisbane was the differences between the Australian higher educational system and the American one, and maybe it is different for younger Australian academics than older ones. Thanks to Fay and Axel for organizing such a nice conference, I really had a great time meeting so many new people and hope you'll all be joining us in Vancouver next year! Nancy
It has changed in Aus. At my university many PhD students are on a government fees scholarship. These used to be loosely administered, and students could go years over their original submission dates and still complete. But now the time limits are much more strictly imposed by the funding body. And, more seriously, no funding is now released until the student completes. So the pressure is very high to complete as quickly as possible. As a part-time student I'm not subject to quite so much pressure, and p/t students who complete generally do it under their time limit, unlike full-time students who often have to stretch the limits. As you'd expect - major projects, big brain work and their presentation in the form of a 100,000 word thesis isn't always amenable to an imposed timetable. In addition, the introduction of some course work at the beginning of the process to make up real or perceived deficits in the candidate's knowledge isn't reflected in a shorter thesis, so the process has in fact become much more pressured downunder. M-H On 06/10/2006, at 12:55 AM, Nancy Baym wrote:
Regarding the PhD student/older academic split Mary-Helen alludes to, I guess I now qualify as the latter, and my sense sitting in there was that the PhD students might be romanticizing what it was like back in the old days. I don't recall a world where writing a dissertation caused no stress, where we were assured of rewarding academic employment, and so on. It was hard then too, we just didn't have blogs to share the experience. That said, one of the interesting things I got a little bit of a feel for in Brisbane was the differences between the Australian higher educational system and the American one, and maybe it is different for younger Australian academics than older ones.
participants (3)
-
Mary-Helen Ward -
Melissa Gregg -
Nancy Baym