how i learned to stop worrying and love to blog
I have never been as hyped as many Communications scholars or bloggers about the democratic possibilities of The Internet. Like Cass Sunstein, I tend to think that The Internet encourages segmentation and therefore reduces the chance of “unanticipated encounters” and “common experiences.” Moreover, it seems that the primary model for blogs to have a big impact is to bring underreported stories to the attention of the mainstream press, thus further legitimatizing corporate media’s influence.
Nonetheless, I’ve watched recently as the so-called “socio-blogosphere” has grown substantially (see: Contexts Crawler). Even though it seems every second assistant professor has a blog these days, I’m somewhat concerned that too many of them serve as public diaries or discussions of trivial things (like frustrations with certain stats packages), rather than discussions of ideas. The gold standard for making a blog substantive and meaningful, while still personal has to be Chris Uggen, whose regular discussion of big social issues, frequent graphing, and lucid insights into the National Basketball Association are unbeatable. While I recognize that my above smack talk will compel me to live up to higher goals (if anybody reads this), I’m going to try my best and not let my commodity fetishism for the latest Mac take over.
I will add you to Scatterplot’s blogroll. Every so often I feel like I should try to do more “substantive and meaningful” blogging, but that aspiration kind of washes against the shoals of seeing how little response people in sociology have typically gotten when they’ve done it. In addition to blogging oneself, another thing one can do to promote alternatives to “public diaries or discussions of trivial things,” is to offer commentary, even if brief, on posts that you feel are more appropriately weighty.
jeremy
February 27, 2008 at 10:18 am
(Also, do you really want to have moderated comments turned on before you’ve even gotten comments? I’ve had as protracted-ugly a conflict with a troll as anyone I know in sociology blogging, and I still am opposed to moderation, because it suppresses discussion.)
jeremy
February 27, 2008 at 10:20 am
No worries. Besides which, I can understand the desire for more “substantive and meaningful” blogging in sociology.
jeremy
February 27, 2008 at 11:57 am
[...] OK, so we live in a world in which it seems every second assistant soc prof has to have a blog. But did you ever wish for a meta site that would lovingly collect and preserve for posterity the [...]
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