10/31 Blog Prompt
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 1 The first piece we read for today, published by anonymous, creates an oppositional relationship between “serious academics” and “professional Instagrammers” which calls to mind some of the issues of elitism we’ve been discussing in class. However, the subtitle raises the more complex idea that academics are now expected to engage with social media (with no promise that it will help them advance their careers).Yet, as this author builds his/her argument, another issue emerges: people are addicted to their phones and it’s annoying and rude. In such a short piece, it’s not possible to adequately address all of these issues and their implications. As a result, in spite of being a “serious academic,” anonymous doesn’t construct a tight argument but rather a somewhat petulant rant.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 Ironically, the response from “The Tattooed Professor” (Kevin Gannon) is a more sustained argument that does all the things you’d expect from a “serious academic”: working closely with the text he’s critiquing, providing evidence for his claims, and staying tightly focused on one clear idea. However, when the conversation grows contentious in the comments section, Gannon stoops to mud slinging when he says, for example, “If you think that’s what I’m saying, you need to work on your reading comprehension.”
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 The removed, semi-anonymous nature of online discourse allows–encourages?–people to become entangled in heated online debates. So does its immediacy. In fast-moving online forums where trends start and stop a hundred times a day, you have to put your 2 cents in quickly or forget any hope of being noticed. It’s publish or perish meets the autobahn.
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 1 This is a very different form of discourse from traditional academia which has largely relied on discussions occurring through publication. When publishing one academic article can take up to a year, you can bet academics are going to be very thoughtful and careful about what they say and how they say it. This means that reading arguments closely and considering critical responses happen over the course of months, not minutes.
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 Both the original anonymous author and Gannon seem to consider themselves academics, and both bring up important issues about the role digital media plays in academia, but both also fall prey to the pitfalls of online discourse. Does this exchange support the idea that we need to protect some elite standards in academia? Can those standards be upheld in a world that privileges speed and immediacy?
¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 2 In your response for today, keep these issues in mind as you join this conversation. If you were a commenter on Gannon’s thread, how would you respond? What points stand out to you as most relevant and why? Do you feel inclined to “take a side” and why? You may also want to consider this on a meta-level–you are engaging in an academic conversation and you have 30 minutes to construct your response. What is the relevance of having time to let ideas sink in? Does digital scholarship privilege immediacy and if so is that detrimental to traditional academic practice? Or is it just different?
You allege that the anonymous Guardian article “doesn’t construct a tight argument” but, instead, results in a “petulant rant.” Yet I think these claims warrant further scrutiny and contextualization.
Anonymous is writing editorial journalism (intended for mass audiences), not scholarship. Gannon’s response is, by comparison, much more “scholarly,” as you point out in the next paragraph, since it adheres to a lot of the expectations governing scholarly argument (claims, evidence, etc.) But is it fair to compare these two posts on the merits of style when the authors are clearly working within differing sets of genre conventions?