I knew, consciously, that I tend to hang out in a relatively homogenous corner of the blogosphere, in which many of us share similar expectations about the norms of blogging. But subconsciously, I think I still assumed that "my" blogosphere is "the" blogosphere - that the culture of blogging I've come to understand is pretty typical. Oh, sure, it's probably not typical of some of the really big shot, sort of "universal" blogs - how can it be when you're attracting thousands of comments? - but at individual faculty/student blogs? Sure.
So it's been interesting, reading law blogs (often dubbed "blawgs"), and discovering small but significant differences in that culture.
First (and I realize that MA/doctoral students may well disagree with my take on this one), I've seen a much bigger gulf between law student blogs and law professor blogs than between MA/PhD student blogs and faculty blogs. That's not because there's no status/social/power differential between MA/PhD students and professors (I still think blogging helps to break down those barriers, but I know not everyone has experienced that, and my attitude may also arise from having mostly senior, fairly hierarchical professors in grad school, so what seems to me like the egalitarianism of the blogosphere may simply be a more egalitarian atmosphere than my own grad experience, not true egalitarianism) (could that sentence be longer?). It's because MA/PhD students are usually studying to do pretty much what their faculty do, so unsurprisingly the two groups share a lot of interests. Law students, in contrast, are usually studying to do something many of their professors have either never done, done only briefly, or are no longer doing - that is, practice law. Law schools (unless you're at Yale, maybe) are not designed to turn out law profs. So there seems a much bigger gulf in outlook between law student bloggers and law prof bloggers than in the MA/PhD world (the exceptions I've seen, unsurprisingly, are SJD students - people with JDs who are doing the equivalent of a PhD in law and, presumably, going to become law profs themselves). In fact, some law student bloggers seem to regard law profs in the same light that undergrads regard their profs - a real "us" and "them" attitude. (I'm not saying that us-and-them-ism doesn't apply to MA/PhD students as well as to law students, but it seems fundamentally different.) (And this is not at ALL a criticism of JD students! It's not good or bad - it's just different from how things work in the corner of the blogosphere I know best.)
Another thing that's struck me is that in law profs' blawgging, there's less tolerance of anonymity than in my own academic blogosphere. I know there are plenty of individual non-law academics who disapprove of anonymity. But most of the "big" academic blogs I can think of (e.g. Crooked Timber) allow pseudonymous (or anonymous) comments as long as they're appropriate (i.e., on-topic, thoughtful, not gratuitously insulting/racist/otherwise bigoted - you get the idea) and not used for sockpuppetry. They all reserve the right to determine what's appropriate and to delete anything they deem falls outside those parameters, but pseudonymous/nymous isn't a big deal. HNN's Cliopatria originally banned anonymous comments, but revised their policy to allow people to comment under consistent pseudonyms as long as they registered and didn't comment under both the pseudonym and their real name.
More law prof blawgs, however, seem to discourage anonymous comments - though this may just reflect an unrepresentative skew in my sample. On his Legal Philosophy Blog, Brian Leiter frequently disallows comments, and when he opens them, he states, "Non-anonymous comments strongly preferred; post only once; comments are reviewed for relevance." (Emphasis in the original.) The policy at Prawfs Blawg is that "In general, if we can't determine who you are, there is a strong
risk that your comment will be deleted. If comments are civil and
substantive, we may overlook the anonymity of the rebellious commenter.
We own our words. You should too."
Perhaps because of this policy, I've seen quite a few snarky responses from nymous commenters
dismissing anonymous commenter's comments at least in part because they are anonymous - along the lines of, "I post under my own name and I'm not going to answer someone who doesn't." (Now, some of those anonymous comments aren't remotely helpful, but in that case it seems easy enough to dismiss the comment because it's unproductive, or rude, or stupid, or whatever, without saying it's unproductive/rude/stupid/whatever because it's anonymous.) Many blawgs by law profs have no problem with anonymous comments, of course, but I seem to have come across more that do, than I have among non-law profs.
(Conversely, almost all the law student blawgs I read are pseudonymous, even if some of those pseudonyms are very thin. Almost all the law student blawgs I read are written by women. Anyway, we don't need to get into that debate again - it's just interesting.)
What prompted these observations was reading something by Belle Lettre (posted at Scatterplot rather than her own blog). In brief, Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Profs made a comment at PrawfsBlawg stating that, "Posting somebody's personally identifiable comment from another blog
without giving them notice and opportunity to respond is viewed by me
and many acquaintances as a form of bullying."
Now, responses to Belle's post and at PrawfsBlawg itself suggest this may not be a norm accepted throughout the blawgosphere. But reading this was another moment of thinking, "Wow, the blawgosphere has some different norms than what I'm used to." And Belle's post at Scatterplot asked for comments about norms in the blogosphere. The following thoughts began as a comment at Scatterplot, but I've never posted there before and decided if was going to drone on about my own thoughts, this was the place to do it.
First, I disagree that quoting someone's comment without giving them notice that you're doing so is "bullying." I see publishing in the blogosphere as analogous to publishing in print in this respect - if, in their own writing, someone quotes something that I've published elsewhere, are they obligated to tell me about it, whether they agree or disagree with me? Of course not. So why should they be obligated to do so in the blogosphere? (Belle points this out in her post.)
Second, Bartow implies that discussing someone's comment is basically talking "behind their back," because she seems to believe that if the person posting about the comment doesn't tell the author of the comment, that author will never know they're being talked about. Belle also points out my own objection to this, which is that Google alerts allow bloggers to know when/where their comments (if linked to their names) are being referenced in the same way that Technorati and the like allow them to know when/where their posts are being referenced. (Somewhere I picked up the idea that if you refer to a blogger it's polite to link to their blog, even if you're not referring to a specific post - which allows the blogger to see who's talking about them. Hence my link to Feminist Law Profs above, even though I can't link to Bartow's comment directly - although at many blogs you can.)
I understand that it can be distressing to stumble across conversations in which you feel like your comments are being mischaracterized/abused (and this probably happens to Ann Bartow more than it does to me, due to the difference in our blogs!), which is what Bartow's stance seems to be addressing. But I think in the blogosphere, as in print literature, once your words are out there, you have to - in most circumstances - let them go.
This is for two reasons. First, you just can't control how people respond to what you write. Say I wrote a book, and it was widely read - a blockbuster best-seller (I should be so lucky!). People are going to talk amongst themselves about it, and some of them are going to get it "wrong," which in some cases means they will fundamentally misread it, and in other cases just means that they will take from it what's relevant to them, and in so doing skew what I consider to be the central message (because that message isn't as relevant to them as to me). I can't be present at all those conversations to say, "No, that's not what I meant at all!!" And I have to live with that. Even published, official critical reactions - if it's a really widely read book, how will I have time to respond to what everyone thinks? I have to get over it. (I guess I am not one of those people who, upon seeing a negative review of my book in a journal, would write one of those furious "reviewer X has COMPLETELY mischaracterized my book!!" letters to the editor. Life's too short! Do you think J.K. Rowling wastes her time writing letters to the editors of publications that publish negative reviews of her works??)
The second reason why I don't agree with the "must tell someone before you talk about what they've written" is I think that unduly restricts what people can talk about. Nor do I think it's my responsibility to inform someone I'm talking about their work; rather, it's their responsibility to track down what people say, if it's important to them.
I'm having a hard time connecting these points logically, so bear with me, but: relevant to this is the way that I view the blogosphere as made up of a whole slew of different communities. Just because you can contribute to all of them, doesn't necessarily mean that you should, even if they're talking about you (or a comment you made). Rather, people should understand the norms that govern a particular community - or its culture - before they participate in that community. If I write a comment somewhere, and one of my regular readers/readees picks up on it and comments on it, I feel comfortable responding, because I regularly participate in conversations with that person and I have a relationship with them (however slight). But occasionally something I've written has been picked up by Inside Higher Ed (for example), and gets read and possibly commented on by a lot of people outside my usual blog community, people I've never read and who've otherwise never read me. While my kneejerk reaction is to leap into those bloggers' comments and dispute what they're saying (and I have done so), I feel like the further away from my usual community a blogger is, the ruder it is to jump into their comments complaining about what they're saying about me. (I realize this is referencing posts rather than comments, but I don't see a real distinction between the two.) That is, if I haven't been part of the conversation in that blog community prior to a discussion of my comments, it's a little rude to blunder into the conversation just because I'm annoyed with what they say about me. I have the right to do so; I just think it's a little awkward.
It's like there's a group of strangers are next to me in a coffeeshop talking about something I completely oppose, and I decide I'm going to tell them how much I disagree with them, even though I've never met any of them and they're not really talking to me. They're talking around me, in public where I can hear them, and in that sense their speech is public; therefore I have the right to respond, but social norms suggest it's a little weird to butt in and bust on them. Conversely, if I go to that coffeeshop regularly, and I always see the same group there discussing stuff I have strong opinions about, there are polite ways in which I can join the conversation. I could approach one of the group on hir own, say "I couldn't help but overheard you talking about subject X - did you see the NYT article about X last Thursday?", ease my way in, that kind of thing. Then, when I've become part of the conversation, I'm in a position appropriately to denounce things I disagree with. If nothing else, if I don't know how that group's conversations work, I might completely misunderstand what I hear, and my indignation might be inappropriate and wasted.
The idea that blogging about someone else's comment without telling them directly is "bullying" seems to me analogous to saying that not inviting that stranger sitting near your group in the coffeeshop to participate in your group conversation is bullying. Why is it that community's obligation to make their conversation even broader than it already is? Why do you have to tell a scholar if you're responding to some kind of idea they've expressed? We're not talking about personal attacks (at least, not necessarily - in some specific instances, that might be the case, which could well merit a different response) - we're talking about a response to someone's ideas. Moreover, what about a positive response to someone's comment? How is that bullying? Finally, there's an implication also that if someone pulls out a comment to disagree with it, that's inherently oppressive, which I find disconcerting. Disagreement with someone's stated ideas is not an attack on their intelligence, legitimacy, or a criticism of their very status as a scholar (well, not necessarily - it can be, of course, if done badly!).
None of these are absolutes - I can easily envision situations in which yes, it is worth busting in on that group in the coffeeshop, even if it's socially awkward and maybe even rude. Some things are important enough to override those niceties. But I also think there are some conversations in which it's just not worth participating.
But what we might have here is simply different norms for blogging. I see the blogosphere more as salons made accessible than an extension of print journalism/scholarship - and this may be less the case in other corners of the interwebs. And, I'm sure, some people would argue that my attitude is different because I'm not writing under my real name.
So, yeah. Lots of different blogging cultures. I can't assume I have it all figured out.
