A lot of time has been spent studying the impact of user generated content. You know, all the stuff that gets posted up onto the web, and whether it is at all useful to us as teachers and educators. Some of the best content is often provided by amateurs - people who are not necessarily specialists or qualified in their field of interest, but who are never the less passionate about their subject. This is also the ethos of sites such as Wikipedia, which rely heavily on 'the people' and 'wisdom of crowds' to create and maintain the content held in its pages. Blogging has emerged in recent years as a strong contender for the number one spot as user generated content, driven as it is by people who are both passionate and knowledgeable. But it's not plain sailing. Influential commentators such as Andrew Keen have sniped consistently against such amateur content, suggesting that it is not only dumbing down society, but also eroding the authority of professionals and scholars, and denigrating knowledge.
And yet where is the first place students will go when they want to glean some facts or information about a subject? A lot of academics and scolars scoff at Wikipedia and forbid their students to reference it in their assessed work. Even more anathema are the many thousands of specialist blogs that are written by avid fans of topics. I must agree that quality across such sites is variable, but I also point out to the critics that just like Wikipedia, there are real experts out there writing these blogs. What if these blogs did not exist? How much poorer would we be in terms of knowledge of the world? There is a criticism that blogs are not peer reviewed, contain mainly opinion and have no credibility when compared with peer reviewed journal articles. Let's examine each criticism in turn.
Journal articles are usually double reviewed by people who are deemed to be experts in their field. Once reviewed, articles are sent back to the author for correction and revision before they are accepted for publication. Such tasks are usually performed by editorial teams. Blogs are peer reviewed, not necessarily in a formal way, but certainly informally through reader comments. I certainly think long and hard about what I write on this blog, because with between 1000-2000 views per day, and a stream of comments coming in from those who either agree or disagree with my views, I sure feel as though I am being peer reviewed. The difference between journal articles and blogs is that blogs are peer reviewed within minutes of being posted. They can also be adjusted, revised and corrected quickly, and re-posted instantly on demand. There may be typos and spelling errors in blogs, but who can honestly tell me that they have never spotted an error in a peer reviewed journal article or book chapter?
Blogs contain a lot of opinion, whereas journal articles are usually based on empirical evidence and research. But what is research anyway? We can no longer argue that research is all about statistical analysis, because there are so many qualitative, narrative and experimental forms of methods available to us as researchers, so who is to say that blogging is not a valid means of research? But how often do we read and take in the editorials in popular newspapers, which are also opinion? I have even read peer reviewed journal articles that are openly 'fictionalised' in their methodology. Opinion is also an excellent trigger for discussion. How will we learn if we don't discuss ideas and negotiate meaning between us. How can we synchronise our activities if there is not a common understanding of what needs to be done? We don't have to agree - in fact it would be a boring, colourless world if we did - but we need to be able to understand each other to get on together.
Blogs are gaining credibility, particularly those that are being followed and read by many people, and those that attract awards and plaudits from peers. They have credibility in a different sense to peer reviewed journal articles. Blogs can become a rallying point - a tribal totem - around which people can come to terms with ideas, change their approach, exchange best practice, and generally engage with their community of practice. It is a lot more intimate than the community that gathers around a peer reviewed journal article. Journals perform a different function entirely, and are less immediate, more slow burning in their impact. Blogs tend to be transitory and ethereal in their presence. Although the archive of a blog is there for people to revisit if they wish, generally it is the article at the top of the stack that is most visible and therefore most visited.
You may already have noticed that blog addresses are beginning to appear in the reference lists of peer reviewed journal articles. This is a trend that I predict will increase as blogs begin to achieve a more respectable and accepted position in the academic world.
One final word: We need to remember that professionals built the Titanic, but an amateur built the Ark. It's not always about expertise - sometimes it's about passion.
Image source Wikimedia Commons
Synching feelings by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
