The Blogging Committment

Throughout my "Introduction to Research" course we have been required to keep a blog - an academic one at that. This is my sixth entry in 8 weeks - not a great start. In the beginning I didn't think it would be difficult to complete 2-3 entries per unit (10-15 in total), apparently I was wrong.

Since I have never had a blog before...or ever kept a journal/diary...something that one would do on a consistent basis, I found this to be a challenge. There were many interesting topics I came across while doing the readings and research for this course, but my instincts were not there to extend that interest into a blog topic...always an after thought. Perhaps with laying out more of a schedule it could become something I did more consistently, but that might take away the positive aspects of actually writing it. At this point, I would like to keep this blog going...hopefully I can create a plan and find the motivation to do so.

While searching through my favourite blog - The London School of Economics and Political Science - I happened across an article that discussed my feelings on the time commitment of a blog.  AND - it had a solution...I will let the author of the article, Alex Marsh, explain:

"It’s pretty difficult to miss the message that the engaged academic should be reaching beyond the academy to communicate with broader publics. And blogging and tweeting have attracted plenty of attention as powerful social media through which to foster public engagement.
...
The commitment of time and energy associated with an individual blog can be enough to deter some people. There is also an argument that the level of commitment required means individual blogs tend to be relatively short lived, and that the individual blog as a blogging format is on the wane. From this perspective the future lies in multi-authored blogs."

A multi-authored blog - yes, please! I think this would help me in two significant ways (and help anyone else out there who finds this whole blogging world a bit overwhelming!):

1. Connect with other social science academics - being able to network and learn from others is always a good idea.

2. Being held accountable - when others are reliant on me I am more motivated to be engaged in an activity. 

Marsh gives a few suggestions as to how one can enter the multi-authored blogging world:

1. Contribute to a blog at your institution (Searching RRU after this post)
2. Contribute to a blog such as the academic blog this idea came from (LSE)
3. Contribute to a non-academic blog of which you have a topic of interest

The multi-authored blog, "Digital Socilogy", also discusses this topic. They state that "the single-author blog model has already gone out of fashion, and is in rapid decline. A blog is only as good as its readership and without consistently strong posts, and an easy way of finding them, there will be no readership."

They go on to describe that multi-authored blogs are an untapped resource where academics are contributing vast amounts of knowledge surrounding all sorts of topics...and universities are functioning as "knowledge inventories". Everyone knows this is happening, but not everyone has access to it.

Multi-authored blogs are a form of academic communication that allows for immediate knowledge to be disseminated, reviewed, and utilized by other academics. They are the way of the future...and a future that I need to find a way to be a part of. 

References

1. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/02/18/going-solo-or-joining-someone-elses-show/


2. http://digitalsociology.org.uk/?

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http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-strategy/3-tools-for-managing-a-killer-multi-author-blog/