"Your Blog or Mine?" ...

by Cliopatria

Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age, teaches law at George Washington University. He has an interesting article,"Your Blog or Mine?" in today's New York Times Magazine on blogging and privacy. We recently had a little dust-up over these issues, when I assumed that whatever someone else posted about themselves on the net was fair game for commentary. In the ensuing discussion, it became clear that some other people disagree with me about that. I can't understand why anyone would post on the net about matters that they might want held confidential, unless they are posting anonymously. When a blogger posts about others, I think, the blogger assumes responsibility for what she or he has said, but then the anonymity of a blogger becomes highly problematic. The internet deeply intensifies lingering unresolved issues about the personal and the political, the private and the professional.

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Ralph E. Luker - 12/19/2004

Yes, and her leaving the net made me feel like a little orphan boy, trying to find a replacement for his momma. Well, that may be a little strong.

Sharon Howard - 12/19/2004

It's always been a matter of huge regret to me that I arrived in blogging just as IA was leaving. (Browsing the archives isn't quite the same.)

Ralph E. Luker - 12/19/2004

Merry Christmas, Claire!

C. H.L. George - 12/19/2004

Ooops. Merry Winterval. :)

Ralph E. Luker - 12/19/2004

I think I agree with you entirely. Invisible Adjunct will always be in my sacred circle of favorite all time bloggers. She blogged pseudonymously or anonymously and she was just wonderfully thoughtful, provocative, discrete, funny -- all at once. It's telling that Rana and Wolfangel, Tim Burke and Ralph Luker, were all big fans of Invisible Adjunct. Rarely, if ever, was there the sort of biting criticism of others that I occasionally indulge myself in. The only really memorable attack by Invisible Adjunct was on Chun the Unavoidable, a pseudonymous blogger/troll. Blessed IA slit poor Chun right in two and he thought his parts were still attached.
Blogging as personal diary doesn't appeal to me very much, but it obviously has a huge attraction to a lot of people and I suspect that the sharing of personal experience does some therapeutic good. If I were doing it, I sure would want to keep it anonymous, in part because none of us are altogether autonomous selves. Without anonymity for ourselves and others, what we reveal and say can have enormous consequences for others, as the Jeff Rosen article indicated.

Sharon Howard - 12/19/2004

So, is it possible to have a grown-up conversation now about the topic of discretion and responsibility in academic blogs?

I've said to somebody in an email and possibly in comments recently that pseudonymity is itself a perfectly valid way of exercising discretion; but if you name names, including your own, then it's a) only right and proper and b) in your own interests to think carefully about what you can and can't say about your life and the people you come into contact with (socially and/or professionally), about things like the kind of language you use and the subjects you cover, and how you should respond with dignity to attacks on yourself, or merely comments that annoy you. If you are named, then your blog is not private; it's a public expression of who you are. You might never mention your work (although that's unlikely with academics...); you might write primarily about your hobbies, your pets, your family. It certainly *doesn't* mean that you have to be 'serious' all of the time. Or that you cannot express your opinions. But it does mean that you have to take seriously the consequences of your actions, the effects on your reputation and that of others.

Ralph E. Luker - 12/19/2004

Claire: You are the cheeky one. "Merry Christmas" has apparently become politically incorrect over here, at least. Seriously, you shouldn't be thrown, one way or the other, by the discussions. You're making your own decisions about what is appropriate and what is not -- and that's as it should be.

C. H.L. George - 12/19/2004

Merry Christmas Ralph

Ralph E. Luker - 12/19/2004

Very well said. I may have damaged my own reputation with people I care about in the way I said what I said. On the other hand, it seemed very odd to me that there wasn't more concern about the indiscretions on the blog in question. A person, posting in her own name, was commenting, usually negatively, about her professors (sometimes specifically named; sometimes not). Why wouldn't a benign someone say: "Whoa, do you have any idea what you are doing? Are you ought of your mind? [I know. Ya gotta be careful on that one.] These people have power over your future, if you expect to have one in academe." I do think there's a place for a sort of prophetic naming of names, sins, etc., else I wouldn't have said what I did, but, wow, she was pulling the plug in her sink faster than any spiggot could fill it.

Sharon Howard - 12/19/2004

It's a pity that Rosen is only really writing about intimate-personal blogging. (Although it makes a refreshing change from reading newspaper articles that assume that all blogging is political-pundit blogging...) Because it allows him to write something like this: "There are two obvious differences between bloggers and the traditional press: unlike bloggers, professional journalists have a) editors and b) the need to maintain a professional reputation so that sources will continue to talk to them... Without a reputation for trustworthiness, neither friendship nor journalism can be sustained over time."

But while academic bloggers may not have editors, the question of reputation (and trust) is surely of key importance to us? And if the previous discussion hadn't been so misdirected, might we have thought about it more as a question of the relationship between blogging and professional reputation?