Scholarly blogging on scholarly blogging Part One

When I finally managed to get off the hypnotic fixation on the twitterwall, I realised that Cornelius Puschmann was trying to sort out the writing process of scholarly blogs. There are, of course, ways of putting up objective functions of scholarly writing. I find the three main functions he lists (taking notes, publishing results, doing PR-work) make sense. But on the other hand you seldom write for one reason, one adressee. You always somehow write for yourself and for yourself to be read.

The question of the relationship between blogger and readers is at the heart of the next paper. Melissa Terras first insists on the role of her blog as a pre-publication place. She explains the role twitter played and the way it came to change the way she writes on her blog. The numbers on the traffic on her blog are amazing. I have been of course following the traffic on my own blog, but it really is interesting to see the statistics in big numbers as it is the case of someone as well known in the blogosphere as Melissa Terras is.

The blog is an archive, a place to protest, etc., sums up Aurelien Berra in a tweet. I think her point is more to emphasize the analytic function of the blog. This is in fact the point where you have to  define for yourself what kind of blog author you are (can be?). As for any authorship, it is something that gets constructed by the interaction with the readers but also by their absence, by the lack of their reaction. It is defined by a censorship you have to find out by yourself, not safeguarded by the traditional scholarly barriers…