Paul Caron of TaxBlog seems to have developed a new hobby: organizing conferences. Christine has already noted his upcoming conference at Indiana, "The Next Generation of Law School Rankings." Paul is now in the process of assembling blawgers from the professoriate to examine the affect of blogging on legal scholarship. (Both Christine and I will be participating.) That has sensitized my antennae, and I am now on the lookout for discussions of this issue. The following comes from the latest issue of the University of Chicago Magazine, where Daniel Drezner, assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago and prolific blogger at danieldrezner.com, wrote about blogging and scholarship:
When I started blogging, I feared that it would prove a distraction from my scholarly research. What I did not anticipate was that it would actually trigger new research avenues. My interest in offshore outsourcing, for example, started when I posted a few items about it and received impassioned responses. By the time I decided to write an article on the topic for Foreign Affairs, I realized that I had unwittingly completed a fair amount of my research via my blog posts.
Done properly, blogging can be a form of initial research in both the empirical and theoretical realms. Empirically, blogging is similar to clipping news articles or gathering information about a case study. Theoretically, blogging permits one to play with ideas—and even better, to get instant (and candid) feedback from readers. The feedback effect on blogs is much quicker than more traditional presentations of new ideas in academia. Because of these comparative advantages, blogging is seeping into scholarship. Already, footnotes referencing individual blog posts are appearing in both legal opinions and public-policy briefs.
I agree completely with this, and my plan for Paul's conference is to write a case study of blawgership based on my experiences here.
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