The Times Higher Education supplement:
I'm a celebrity academic ... in the blogosphere
British universities have been encouraged to embrace the concept of the "celebrity academic" and follow in the footsteps of their "shamelessly" self-promoting peers in North America.
Chris Brauer, lecturer in online journalism at City University London, said academics should be encouraged to use the blogosphere to raise their profiles.
If the goal is to "raise your profile" to celebrity academic, good luck with that. The first-mover advantage of blogging is long gone. Martin Weller thinks more rationally:
This isn't the first time I've heard the celebrity argument, but I think it misunderstands the aim, or benefits of blogging. It assumes that becoming a celebrity is the only goal for an academic blogger. This seems to me to exhibit a lack of imagination and makes a straightforward analogy of print journalism to blogging. Sure, there are some good academic bloggers who perform the role of interpreting events for the general public, but there are many more who write about their subject in detail, where the intended audience is that of their peers or community. If have a very specialised area of expertise, medieval dance (say), then it's not about becoming a celebrity by blogging about this, but rather having influence and being recognised within your (probably quite small) community.
Personally, I Google for people when I want to find out about their work. When they don't have a presence on the first page of results, that discourages me from following up further. You don't have to blog to be engaged and accessible, but you do need some kind of online presence.
(via Clock)
