A couple of months ago I had the idea of writing a blog post on why academics do not blog on EU politics. Somehow, due to time constraints, the idea never made it into a proper blog post. Suddenly the topic became interesting again as I found out about “Ideas on Europe”, a new EU blog platform that will be launched later this year with an academic focus:
Ideas on Europe aims to invigorate current discussion on Europe by providing an impartial, unbiased online platform where individuals can engage in informed analysis, comment, dialogue and debate.
The organisation behind the projects is the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) a membership organisation with “over 1300 academics, practitioners and research students”. The aim is to get UACES members to contribute to the new platform. At the moment the new page (beta!) is pretty basic and not much content can be found (except a post by nosemonkey), they are in the process of recruiting bloggers (or better: motivating academics!) to open a blog on Ideas on Europe. So if you are interested, you can apply here.
In my opinion, the idea behind Ideas on Europe is quite good: Providing the (missing) link between academics working on EU topics and the public. However, working in (EU-) academia myself it could be quite difficult to get scholars to blog and read blogs regularly.
First obstacle: Among academics the knowledge of blogs and web 2.0 is not as widespread as one would assume. (= not worth trying)
Second obstacle: Blogs (not EU blogs – nobody knows them!) are often regarded as second class media. (= not worth reading)
Third obstacle is a sentence you will hear a lot in universities: “I only publish in peer reviewed journals – only this is useful for my academic career.” (= not useful)
It is really necessary to address these three (possibly more) obstacles in order to get an academic audience. I hope UACES will also manage to motivate enough scholars to blog regularly about their research (in a readable style!). Only if they manage to get a critical amount of (new) bloggers and a (new) audience the platform will be successful. Another danger is academics who will only post the abstracts of their journal articles on the platform (or even the whole article…). Publishing posts with ”call for papers’ and ‘conference announcements’ will also not do the trick…
As a bloggingportal editor (and a feedreader addict!) I hope cross-posting bloggers will be in the minority. (so, UACES please check babelblogs and blogactiv before admitting bloggers!).
9 Comments
Why do we need a new platform for that? As a blogging academic I don’t see the point of bundling academics on a special blogging platform, especially if the content will be very diverse.
The only minor advantage could be to lower the perceived hurdle of entering into this “blogging thing” for sceptics within the academia, but I don’t see why exactly this project would get the 19th century book worms into the 21st century interactive science environment…
The thing we need is to explain to academics how their involvement in more open, interactive communication formats can bring forward their careers, and, more important, their academic interests. What should be done is to write a joint blog on good experiences in academic blogging, one where an interested audience could come and see how others are successfully employing new communication tools in science.
I totally agree. Thing is that we (academics that blog about the EU) are the exception . Maybe it is important that an established brand (= old style academic association) takes on the task to bring in academics. Especially younger academics might find blogging on the UACES platform less “threatening” and more useful for their careers. Depends a lot whether they can get people hooked up on the idea.
Shared: Ideas on Europe – EU Blogging goes academic http://tinyurl.com/ktbc8y
As Ideas on Europe was sort of my idea, and as I’m relatively closely involved in getting it up and running, I probably ought to answer…
First thing to note, though, is that it’s not even being soft-launched for another few weeks, with the official launch not set until the Autumn – lots of things to iron out still (including the categories – which shouldn’t even be taken as guidelines at this stage).
Then, point by point (for ease):
- the lack of knowledge of the web among academics is (hopefully) going to be solved by a series of simple guides that I’m (meant to be) writing. British academics are also currently being actively encouraged to do more online – a combination of new assessment criteria and increased competition for students since the introduction of top-up fees mean they increasingly need to demonstrate active engagement with the public at large. We’re also likely to have a few postgrad bloggers – they should be a bit more web savvy.
- the second-class media aspect of blogs is an opinion I fully agree with, and that I’ve been arguing for years. They’re mostly rubbish and mostly unread. I doubt this initiative will do much to solve the lack of readers (at least in the short to medium term – bar possibly expanding readership among students), but my main aim with it is to raise the level of debate by having more active bloggers who actually know what they’re talking about. (Think About It, for example, despite being a laudable initiative to get more people blogging didn’t do much to get more people blogging who could actually advance people’s understanding – because the majority were starting from a position of close to zero knowledge.)
- as for being useful to academics, again, the revised assessment criteria for UK universities should see us get a good uptake from British academics; UACES also has a sizable membership and a good reputation – as well as a couple of its own journals. This should give it a certain level of respectability and buy-in to start with. The added bonus of raised Google profiles as time goes on should see more people convinced of the benefits down the line. But as this is actively not supposed to be traditional academic publishing, you’re right – breaking down that ivory tower snobbishness is going to be a challenge. We’re working on it.
- abstracts and calls for papers are going to be actively discouraged (though not banned outright, as this may well prove a useful promotional platform for those sorts of things – it’s just we obviously want people to read the blogs, not ignore them utterly, as happens with most online publication of academic abstracts at the moment). In any case, the aim is that these things are meant to be proper blogs – original content by academics for a more general audience. If it’s just a bunch of academic papers that’ll only be read by other academics, it serves no useful function – they can already read all those papers in their university libraries.
Julien – lowering the hurdle is one of the major aims. It can be daunting blogging for the first time – especially if you don’t have any support base to ask advice from. This platform will provide that support – both from UACES (and me) and from the other bloggers. Likewise, for high-profile academics to start a blog can be risky from a reputation point of view – what if no one reads you, yet you’re a professor at a major university? It’d be embarrassing… This platform should guarantee readers – because interested parties will all be in one place.
Your final paragraph, though, is entirely the point from UACES’ perspective. Open the debate up to the public, and raise academia’s profile – and the profiles of individual academics who are taking part. Let the public realise that it’s not all just about dusty books and marking undergraduate essays, but that debate, discussion and constant research in the name of new ideas and new understandings is what it’s all about.
MY aim, as I say, is to encourage more knowledgeable people to take part in online debates which are all too often dominated by ignorance and partisanship (or, increasingly in some sections of the Euroblogosphere, the same old faces all agreeing with each other) – that’s if they even take place at all (because, let’s face it, far too much is still undebated and undiscussed – because there’s simply too few of us to cover it all).
But if I get my way and both broaden and raise the level of debate, then UACES will also get their aim of a raised profile for them as an organisation, their members, the bloggers, and European Studies as a multi-disciplinary form – hence us working together on this.
At this stage it’s still very early days, though – so any suggestions at all are much appreciated… You know my email, etc…
Thanks for the comment. When I saw your post up there I was pretty sure you were involved in the thing
As I said I think it is an interesting idea and I hope it will be successful. If you need any help, feel free to contact me. I am working in UK academia and I am even a UACES member
One small personal anecdote from a university: As you pointed out, UK academics are encouraged to be more active online and research councils like seeing blogs in project proposals especially as a dissemination tool for the funded research. Clever academics know that, include it blogs the proposal but never think of using the blog. Just a day before the deadline of the final report submission they set up a blog, write a couple of articles, copy paste the conclusions, and send the report (with the link to their successful dissemination blog) to the council … alibi blogging at its best.
I don’t doubt we’ll get a lot of blogs with only a few posts (much like BlogActiv…) – but if we can get a couple of dozen regulars in the first few months, I’m hoping it should start to take off. We’re currently working to an initial two-year plan – certainly not expecting anything amazing to happen overnight. Hell, we haven’t even got any funding for it yet – this is all being worked on as a side-project…
In an ideal world, it’ll turn into an accessible online journal – not quite a traditional academic journal, but almost. Something along the lines of Crooked Timber with a larger contributor base would be good.
Any suggestions of other good academic blogs (i.e. by academics but accessible to non-academics) that I can use as examples for possible contributors much appreciated, by the by.
Shared: Ideas on Europe – EU Blogging goes academic http://tinyurl.com/ktbc8y
There is far to little social science in the (European) blogosphere and it sounds like a great idea in principle. Considering the lack of academic interest in blogging, it would be great if social scientists (especially in politics and IR) could be encouraged to blog more. However I have doubts that narrowing down the topic (EU) is an ideal move to achieve that as potential interest is relatively thin. On the other hand perhaps you can target your bloggers/readers better. I hope it will work.
I would love to write more on EU topics (and in English) but I guess I cannot handle more than one science blog at a time. But I would be happy to make a contribution from time to time if that fits into the concept (and of course provided there is interest).
Ali – first up, the focus is Europe in its broadest sense, not just the EU. Although obviously the EU will play a big part for those contributors who want to focus more on current/recent developments
Secondly, getting some science bloggers on board would definitely be good, as I have a sneak suspicion that we may start off a bit politics/social sciences heavy. I’ll try and drop you an email about it later – and if it slips my mind then get in touch – email my username @gmail.com for details
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