I wrote a bit yesterday about conceptualising the blogosphere as one type of virtual world; one that is predominantly a written world. And as such it has embedded within it some of the issues that I am interested in more generally with this project such as notions of authorship and audience and the changing relationship between these two.
Authorship on a blog is a bizarre thing. Author, authorise, authority. All are etymologically related and all suggest a power to tell, whether it is to tell a story or to tell in the sense of directing others. According to Blum, recent notions of authorship have changed significantly and it is largely thanks to new media. Earlier notions of the author as a solitary figure crafting his works of genius in an intellectual vacuum have given way to more flexible and multiple versions of the self, and this self is at ease with collective forms of knowledge and knowledge creation. (Check out the Living and Learning With New Media findings just released for more in how new media and digital technologies are reconfiguring interactions and understandings of online interaction.)
Blogging provides a platform for authors that almost by default makes their work collaborative. I’m not writing for myself. I’m writing with the hope that I receive feedback from other bloggers. I’m also writing with the aim of taking some of the authority out of traditional authorship. This seems especially important in anthropology. Blogging should be considered another next step in leveling access to knowledge production and consumption.
Blogging has an important role in changing the relationship between author and audience. Undoubtedly, blogs are still author-centric; ultimately the author has the choice whether to allow comments and pingbacks, and whether to engage in a dialogue with the commenters. But I have yet to come across an anthropology blog that has disabled the comments section…or any of the blogs I read for that matter.
In terms of the relationship between author and audience in anthropology, blogging has the potential to do two things. First, it can alter the understandings of what publishing is in anthropology, and as a result alter who is considered the anthropological audience. Anthropological publishing is typically in journals with the intended audience being other academics. Blogging about your research means people outside of academic institutions, or even people outside the anthropological field, as Owen highlights, will be more likely to come in contact with your work. Secondly, blogging about your research means that your participants can be involved throughout the authorship process. This takes some level of the ultimate authority that usually rests with the anthropologist and places it in the hands of the participants. As a result, the path to the final out-of-the-blog-published result is a more transparent one, and also one with a digital footprint that is able to be recalled and contested.
I’m still getting my head around the audience aspect of blogging. I find the fact that the audience is largely invisible slightly weird, although I can’t pinpoint why. How does a blogger know who they are writing for, and what the audience is interested in? For instance, I can see from the stats on my blog’s dashboard that almost 50 people looked at yesterdays post, but there are no comments. I’m just curious, who are you? How did you find my blog?
Works referred to in post:
Blum, Susan 2008 The Internet, the Self, Authorship and Plagiarism. In Anthropology News 49(3):8-9.
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