Blogging – new tool for young researchers

Academic blogs have been hailed as an effective tool to elicit comment from the general public to stimulate further understanding and interest in specific areas of research that can ultimately contribute to our understanding of society.

On Tuesday, I attended a workshop on ‘Academic Blogging in the College of Asia and the Pacific’ presented by the managers of two popular ANU academic blogs, ‘New Mandala’ (RMAP) and ‘East Asia Forum’ (Crawford School). Their discussion centered on their experiences and the blogging impact on the academic world and the ‘internet society’.

‘New Mandala’ focuses on mainland Southeast Asia, in particular, current events and contentious issues in Thailand and Myanmar. The blog posts and comments reveal a dynamic dialogue highlighting the disputes among bloggers on current issues. As such, it operates with minimal modification by the editors. This policy has succeeded to attract wide range of blog participants from all around the world. Nicholas Farrelly reported that New Mandala has received about 1,800 posting and 15,000 comments in the last three years, and includes articles from many qualified academic professionals. It continues to grow in popularity.

By contrast, ‘East Asia Forum’ focuses on public policy and economics in East Asia and the Pacific. This blog seeks to promote academic scholarship to contribute to world policymaking. The managers spend significant effort and time to screen and edit posts in an effort to maintain a high quality of information. Although, they have fewer posts compared to New Mandala, their articles are conferred greater academic credibility.

The ANU blog managers strongly encouraged PhD students and young researchers to participate by posting to their blogs. They indicated that writing an article, linking to the research topic, will help clarify ideas and facilitate robust comment from wide range of participant bloggers from around the world. They also stressed that academic blogs enable a more comprehensive understanding of issues that can help to broaden the views and scholarship of young researchers.