Share Your Research on a Blog

November is Academic Writing Month #AcWriMo, and our sister site MethodSpace has been posting numerous articles on various writing themes every week! The theme of week four is: Share Your Work. As noted, in the digital age we need to think about sharing our work in more ways than the formal publication of articles or books. This post focuses on blogs, and subsequent posts at MethodSpace will look at social media.

“Blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things
that an academic should be doing right now” (Dunleavy & Gibson, 2012).

How can researchers provide information about their studies in ways that would be useful and interesting to prospective and current research participants? With that question in my mind, I began to explore the potential for blogs to recruit and inform participants. As with almost any online exploration, I discovered a much broader potential for blogs in the academic world.

Today’s researchers, scholars, and students are finding many valuable ways to use blogs. I’ve come to realize that blogs play an important part in the publishing cycle and online ecosystem. It is not a matter of either/or: we need to find ways these different communication options fit with our larger career and research goals.

Blogs and Social Media

Before going any further with this discussion, it’s important to define blogs and to distinguish between blogs and social media.

Blogs, short for weblogs are personal online journals where entries are posted chronologically. Microblogs use the same principle but allow for very short entries. Blogs can be text only or embed or link to images or media. Some are public and others are only seen by subscribers or friend lists.

Bloggers can choose from a number of free or paid platforms where they can devise their own templates, adapt or use available templates. Popular platforms include WordPress, Blogger and Squarespace. Blogs are very flexible and users can create a wide variety of formats and styles of presentation. Some are very basic with simple narrative posts and others are complex with design features that include text and media in static pages and time-sensitive posts. Bloggers use comment features to invite feedback or to interact with readers. Bloggers may choose to generate revenue with advertising and other promotions.

Bloggers are not limited by proscribed lengths, styles, features or page designs. This flexibility stands in contrast to posts made to social networking sites. Social networking sites are typically run as commercial platforms by large companies. These companies have determined ways to make a profit from user-generated material and are thus invested in allowing certain kinds of posts. Brands are built on the sites’ graphic design and features. Users of sites like Facebook can be surprised to login and find that their pages’ format has changed. They have become accustomed to seeing advertising on their walls, as well as links to other content the company has decided is of interest to users who fit a certain profile. Users of the microblog tool Twitter accustomed to the 140 character limitation were surprised to see the limit expanded to 280 characters..

Social networking sites and blogs are typically interconnected. Bloggers use social media in order to build an audience. They create posts that fit within the constraints of the social networking sites, but link back to the blog where they have the freedom to present information in the way they prefer. Bloggers can use social networking to interact with others and use their blogs to present more substantial writings, and other expressions such as graphics and media. The important point here is that by knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each type of site, we can make better choices about which best meets specific academic purposes.

Table 1: Blogs and social networking sites

Academics and Blogs

I suggest that academics can use blogs in three main ways:

• Researcher-to-Researcher: Sharing and exchange,
• Researcher-to-Participants: Building credibility and “informing” participants, or
• Researcher-to-Public: Sharing and applying findings, results and practical resources.

Researcher-to-Researcher: Academic bloggers communicate with each other for exchange and networking within or across disciplines. They present information in ways that build upon a shared foundation in the topics under discussion, and a shared understanding of the protocols and expectations for activities such as conducting research or teaching at the college level. Blog posts offer an opportunity for input on work in progress from others in the field. These blogs are places to share resources, links to recent publications, calls for papers, or notices about upcoming conferences, or other opportunities of interest to other academics.

Researcher-to-Participants: Academic bloggers communicate with prospective or current participants. They present information in ways the study population will understand. Blogs intended for this purpose can introduce the study, develop the credibility of the researcher, be used to support recruitment efforts, and help to inform participants before and during the study.

Researcher-to-Public: Academic bloggers also communicate with professionals, practitioners, and the general public. They present information in ways that anyone would understand and find of interest. The researcher may translate academese or disciplinary jargon into more familiar terms. The researcher may offer recommendations for applying findings in practical ways. This type of blog is designed to share findings and/or to build awareness about the issues and problems under investigation.

Patrick Dunleavy introduced another way to categorize academic blogs, and I think his approach meshes well with mine. He distinguishes between them according to the number and type of all author: solo, collaborative, or multi-author (Dunleavy, 2014). Table 2 is adapted from his model.

Table 2: Types of blogs identified by Patrick Dunleavy (2014). See the article for additional categories and the full table.

As an academic with an interest in blogging, you have the choice of designing and launching your own solo blog, finding a group of like-minded writers who want to begin a collaborative blog, or looking for opportunities to contribute to a multi-author blog in your field. Alternatively, you can look for opportunities to contribute as a guest writer for blogs that focus on your area of interest.

How might these categories inter-relate? A juxtaposition of Dunleavy’s and my categories for academic blogs is illustrated in Table 3. The columns are intended here not as a fixed set of boundaries but more as a continuum between on one end, the individual DIY blogger who is responsible for everything from choosing the domain name, platform, hosting service, and figuring out how to make it all work to on the other end of the continuum, a professional operation more comparable to  journal or magazine production.

Here are a few examples for each category:

• Researcher-to-Researcher 
  Solo: This Sociological Life from Deborah Lupton, Helen Kara, Patter, from Pat Thompson, and The Academic Creative from Katie Linder.
  Collaborative: Sociological Imagination ,  The Thesis Whisperer, and Small Pond Research
  Multi-Author: London School of Economics 
Impact of Social Sciences, and ACRLog, a blog for academic and research librarians. SAGE Methodspace is also an example of this type.
• Researcher-to-Participant
  Specific to the research project and taken offline when project is completed. No examples available.
• Researcher-to-Audience
  Collaborative: Savage Minds, anthropology for a public audience, Division of Environmental Biology (DEB)
  Multi-Author: Policy Press’s Discover Society. Research in Practice, and Teacher Toolkit, .

Thinking about blogging? Here are a few questions to consider: 

• If you want to blog about your research, will it best serve you to aim your writing towards others in your field, your potential or current participants, professionals who can use your findings, or the public?
• Do you want to commit to managing all aspects of the blog, and regular posts? Or would you rather join with others for a collaborative effort?
• Do you want to submit guest posts to more professional multi-author blogs? If so, which will best align with your purpose?

Please share your favorite academic blogs and let me know how you think they would fit into these categories. Do you think the blogger or bloggers achieve their purpose? Why or why not? Share your ideas and examples here or in the #AcWriMo Twitter thread.

Want to learn more about academic blogging?

• Shorter, better, faster, free: Blogging changes the nature of academic research, not just how it is communicated
• How to plan, create and launch a successful multi-author academic blog
• An antidote to futility: Why academics (and students) should take blogging / social media seriously
• 3 Rules of Academic Blogging
• Using your blog as a research journal

 Note: Parts of this post were published previously on Vision2Lead.com.