The Guardian claims blogging is now necessary for academics

Today The Guardian claimed that blogging is now a necessary tool for minority scholars. The line separating academics from blogs is one that should be crossed if researchers and scholars want their work to impact people outside the academic community.

As an academic blogger herself, the University of Venus’ Liana Silva wrote, “We invest a lot of time and effort into what we do. For many of us, the care and attention we put into each of our blog posts reflects the attentiveness we have within our own research as a whole, and by extension reflects perhaps our training as scholars.”

In the article she discusses how blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley from The Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog was fired because of controversial comments she made against black studies as a discipline. The whole concept of blogging was looked down upon for a long time because of skirmishes like these that made people question the legitimacy of all bloggers everywhere.

But Silva writes, “… our legitimacy lies in our writing: in our laptops, in our pens, in our smartphones.” For minority scholars especially, it’s a way to be heard, for people to care about what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for. Blogging is a opportunity to communicate outside of a strictly academic context; outside of the jargon and departmental community, to share your research with a maybe less-informed but still larger and listening audience.

Check out Liana Silva’s full article on The Guardian’s Higher Education Network blog.