Yesterday, Inside Higher Ed published two “opposing” articles: one from a skeptic of academic blogging (though this skeptic is an academic blogger) and one from an enthusiast of academic blogging. The former is written by Adam Kostko, a doctoral student at Chicago Theological Seminary, and the latter by Scott Eric Kaufman (see his blog), a doctoral candidate in English at UC-Irvine. The former actually seems to me to be more a skepticism about group academic blogging, especially when those group blogs have a particular shared “mission,” than academic blogging in general. He says that he hopes academic blogs might work to “[bring] new scholarly research to the attention of an interdisciplinary audience.” But at this point in the academic blogging game, Kostko concludes, “academic blogs seem to me to be best-suited as a social outlet for academics who would otherwise feel isolated, creating camaraderie and supplementing the social aspects of disciplinary conferences.”
I don’t know. I think that there is a lot of non-academic “clutter” in biblioblogs, which makes it difficult to keep up with, but I’d say there are two to four good, deep academic multi-blog discussions per month in the biblioblogosphere (not to mention many solid individual posts that don’t pick up multi-blog discussions). That’s pretty good!
And on Kostko’s other point, blogs as a social outlet for academics . . . what’s so bad about that? That is one of Kaufman’s main points when he says, “I consider the power of blogs to be supplementary and concrete: they provide atomized intellectuals a way to meet and remain in contact with fellow sufferers and their ideas.” Let us suffer together!
