Academic Blogs

Academic blogs are an increasingly popular form of social media that allow scholars to enact public engagement. This chapter examines academic blogs as scholarship, blogs about scholarship, and blogs as a tool to generate scholarship. After reviewing key terms and processes related to blogging, a brief history of blogging is provided. Then three types of blog environments are reviewed: personal, topic-driven, and filter blogs. Next, five metaphors for academic blogs are considered: blogs as education, information, relationship, engagement, and scholarship. These metaphors illustrate the breadth of blog functions, specifically their use for research innovation, mobility, connection, and reflexivity as well as for educational possibilities. Blogging as a form of scholarship is then explored in depth, especially the use of blogs for content analysis, multiadic discourse analysis, forms of diary research, and arts-based approaches. Finally, two key tensions regarding blogs as scholarship are explored: how the expedience of blog scholarship comes into conflict with concerns about credibility and how the accessible language and approaches to blog writing come into conflict with a blog entry’s enduring popularity or appeal.