I have been reading the thesis paper by Kathleen Asselin entitled Blogging: The Remediation of Academic and Business Communications. In this thesis paper the author looks at how blogging can be used in academia and in business. In the introduction of the paper there is a comment there which says"Although the vast amount of information available on many blogs is not always verifiable, a growing number of blogs, primarily in academia, are being recognized for their quality and accuracy." (pg.6). I find this to be a valuable statement concerning blogs as before one takes the content as "truth", one needs to do homework not only on what is said but also on who the author is and their background. You shouldn't just accept what is stated at face value. There needs to be a process of verification which can be very time consuming. In the second chapter there is a discussion on the use of blogs within academia. There are descriptions of how various professors have used blogs within their class to create an open dialogue between the students. It goes on to describe the difference between an academic bolt and a personal blog, one instructor referred to the blogs as a hybrid blog, a balance of academic and personal writing.
The paper looks at what is an academic blog and lists some guidelines (pg. 12) of what makes up a academic blog. An interesting note that is mentioned is that in studies what was found was that students took more care when writing the blog in regards to grammar, spelling, accuracy and even liveliness of expression in their work. This was attributed to peer pressure, to have a good looking blog for their fellow students to follow. Another observation from the paper is that even when a new idea or technology is presented to the students to use, does not mean they will want to use it. I can relate to this comment as it may take some out of a comfort zone, they have to take it a small step at a time to become comfortable with how it works. The article goes on with the question as to whether blogging should be considered for a promotion to a tenure position. This is one area I am not convinced with, for me to be promoted one must have the ability to teach, not write a blog, I believe a promotion should be earned on the merits of what the customer (student) rates the instruction quality as. But institutions operate as big business and if the writing means more dollars (research grants) then that will potentially form a criteria.
The paper goes on to look at how blogs can be used in business as well. I believe one has to be very careful as to how it is utilized in business, it can produce negative results as well.The examples given were a post asking specific questions about certain ideas, promotions or services that were being considered, more to get a feel of what the customer would like to see. Accordingly the responses that were returned were a relatively small number so to base market research on that unless it can be augmented with other sources would not be beneficial. The other issue that was described is that industry can use employee blogs for grounds of dismissal, that is much the same as employers looking at a potential employee's Facebook page then determine from that whether they get the position or not.
Lots of ideas about the use of blogs in academia and business but still a long way to go, mind you the paper was written in 2008 so what has happened since then in this area. Have further inroads to acceptance been made? Are we still where we were then? Have we moved away from blogs that it was the in thing to do at that time and now something better has come along? A few questions to think about.