What we blog: A qualitative analysis of researchers’ weblogs (original) (raw)
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What we blog: A qualitative analysis of research blogs
Traditionally, academic researchers have been using platforms such as conferences, academic journals and books to present their findings and engage in academic discourse with their peers. The development of Information and Communication Technologies provides researchers not only with new tools, but also with new means of interaction. Among the new platforms are also weblogs (blogs). Formerly defined as `online logbooks', blogs can be used for a variety of purposes. A small but growing number of researchers write research related blogs. In this paper we present a qualitative, explorative study, carried out with the aim of describing and structuring information provided by academic researchers in their blogs. We describe a framework for categorising blogs and blog posts as well as patterns of blogging behaviour we have observed in research blogs.
“Finishing One Big Adventure in Order to Embark on Another”: Exploring University Research Blogs
Research in Language, 2019
The article focuses on blogs related to research activities of the academic community. Research-related blogs as components of university websites have developed into an array of sub-genres shaped by specific foci, their authors and the desired audiences. The data set consists of fifty posts from ten blogs of six universities. Drawing upon Swales’ methodology of genre analysis, the study explores the generic structure of the blog posts, reveals the communicative purposes they can fulfil within the landscape of university websites, identifies significant communication strategies, and explores the roles the blogs may serve in communicating science to the diverse audiences they potentially address. The analysis has shown that the blogs help accomplish the general goals of informing about the university and promoting it providing a personalized view and engaging the reader, manifest loose but recurrent generic structuring, and can be vehicles of knowledge dissemination as well as knowle...
Issues and challenges of using web blogs as a medium for research communication
Waikato Journal of Education, 2011
The advent of web-based technology has initially allowed millions of users to get hold of immense information and to communicate worldwide. In the field of education, for example, web-based technology has brought about significant influence in terms of teaching and learning approaches using web blogs as a medium for communicating with respondents for research purposes. The issues and challenges discussed in the paper were based on the researchers' own experience in conducting data collection using a qualitative approach through web blog discussions. With the socio-cultural approach in view, some recommendations are also included as guidelines for those planning to use such web-based technology as a medium of data collection in research.
Academic blogs: A platform for sharing information and disseminating knowledge
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2013
In this article, keywords are analysed in a corpus comprising two academic blogs in higher education, specifically dealing with issues of Open Distance Learning (ODL). WordSmith Tools was used to extract keywords from the blogs, and the thematically significant keywords were then analysed. The keywords were grouped according to three classes. Firstly, the first person pronoun 'I' was discussed to analyse the style and authorial voice in the blogs. Next, localised keywords that occur frequently in specific blog posts were discussed. Thirdly, keywords related to the theme of higher education such as 'students' and 'distance' were analysed. The final section of the findings looked at issues of power in these blogs. The findings show that Siemens' and Prinsloo's academic blogs are an accessible source of information regarding higher education that have the potential to be successfully integrated into teaching and learning.
How is research blogged? A content analysis approach
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2014
Blogs that cite academic articles have emerged as a potential source for alternative impact metrics for the visibility of the blogged articles. Nevertheless, in order to more fully evaluate the value of blog citations, it is necessary to investigate whether research blogs focus on particular types of articles or give new perspectives into scientific discourse. Thus, we studied the characteristics of peer-reviewed references in blogs and the typical content of blog posts to get insights into the bloggers' motivations. The sample consisted of 391 blog posts from 2010-2012 in Researchblogging.org's Health category. The bloggers mostly cited recent research articles or reviews from top multidisciplinary and general medical journals. Using content analysis methods, we created a general classification scheme for blog post content with ten major topic categories, each with several subcategories. The results suggest that health research bloggers rarely self-cite and the vast majority of their blog posts (90%) include a general discussion of the issue covered in the article, with over a quarter providing health-related advice based on the article(s) covered. These factors suggest a genuine attempt to engage with a wider nonacademic audience. Nevertheless, almost 30% of the posts included some criticism of the issues being discussed. Given that explicit criticism is rare in academic articles, this suggests that blogs are a more natural home for this important scientific activity.
Science blogs in research and popularization of science: why, how and for whom?
As the Internet emerged as an efficient channel for sending information and fostering collaborations on a global scale, this unanticipated phenomenon paved the way for a new era of science, namely e-science or digital scholarship. Massive data repositories moved online, academic publications (preprints and articles alike) became searchable across disciplinary boundaries, collaborations grew larger. But the Internet is now developing into so-called web 2.0, where active participation is replacing passive broadcasting: every user can become their own media maker and share videos, images or text. To date, the most popular form for the latter are blogs (short for web-logs). The blog format was originally used for online diaries but has rapidly evolved into a versatile publication and conversation tool. This shift is also being embraced by scientists, on a limited, albeit growing scale. First isolated, then grouped in communities, science bloggers (I use the term to include professional scientists as well as students, journalists, science amateurs, science museums, concerned groups…) have already demonstrated the potential to influence how research is done, results are communicated and the public is reached. Among the many topics that blogs discuss, I will focus here on science and the academic life, thus defining a type of “science blogging” that is effectively turning digital scholarship into conversational scholarship. But in concrete terms, how is that different? And where might this evolution be leading us? I try to shed some light on the matter in the following pages.
Researchers’ Blogging Practices in Two Epistemic Cultures: The Scholarly Blog as a Situated Genre
Human It, 2014
This article presents a study of 16 scholarly blogs with the aim to gain an in-depth understanding of what characterizes blogging as part of the scholarly communication. Eight blogs from high energy physics (HEP) and eight from digital history were closely followed. The analysis was made by employing an analytical framework based on genre theory. The results reveal common communicative purposes in the scholarly blogs; there are many similarities in form features and content, which also relate to the purposes of the blogs. In addition, the context in which the blogs are situated is based both in the blogging researchers' epistemic cultures and in their knowledge about blogging practices.