The impact of blogging on reputation

I was alerted this morning on Twitter to this blogpost by Brian LePort on the first of 5 reasons why students shouldn't blog. Its central thesis is that "it is almost impossible to avoid writing something that will offend someone". Consequently, bloggers run the risk of doing themselves reputational harm at best, or failing to get a job or even getting fired at worst.

LePort illustrates his thesis by the extraordinary case of Christopher Rollston, who tells how he was forced to resign from a post at Emmanuel Christian Seminary because he wrote a piece for the Huffington Post on the marginalization of women in the Bible. Rollston, who describes himself as a Christian, concluded: "Gender equality may not have been the norm two or three millennia ago, but it is essential. So, the next time someone refers to 'biblical values,' it's worth mentioning to them that the Bible often marginalized women and that's not something anyone should value." Apparently, a major funder of the seminary disapproved of such incendiary sentiments and Rollston's career there was toast.

I have to say, I find LePort's reaction to this story disappointing. Yes, people who blog should think carefully about what they say and the impact it may have. Yes, it's impossible to avoid offending someone somewhere, unless what you write is so boring and anodyne that nobody would want to read it. But I despair at the idea of a future generation so cowed with fear that nobody ever says anything original or controversial.

I'm not arguing that students and junior academics should sacrifice themselves on the altar of freedom of speech, but rather that they should have confidence in the positive as well as the negative power of the internet. If what they say is worth saying, they will get support. LePort focuses on the negative consequences of Rollston's blogging, but, as this post by Robert Cargill pointed out, he attracted huge support online and ended up in a better job, whereas Emmanuel Christian Seminary suffered massive reputational damage.

LePort makes the important point that blogs are very different to more formal academic writing and often represent a point of view at a particular point in time, which may subsequently change. To my mind, this is one of the huge benefits of blogging – if you are lucky, your blog will attract comments that expose you to a wide range of reactions and help clarify and develop your thinking. This can be both fun and useful. LePort worries, though, that this may mean your incomplete and half-baked thoughts on an issue are used against you by those in positions of authority.

As a senior academic, I hope I can offer some reassurance. In general, I see blogging as an indication that the author is a bit out of the ordinary – someone who cares enough about things to write about them, and who is willing to try and move discussion forward. If in addition they change their views on the basis of feedback, that's fine. Obviously, it's possible to reveal yourself on a blog as uninformed, irrational or bigoted, and that is definitely not good. But most of the blogs I read aren't like that.

Well, I can hear you saying, that's all very well. You are someone who actually blogs and understands social media, but most academics aren't like that. My reply is that social media is an unstoppable force and even the most traditional institutions are starting to focus on developing strategies for harnessing its power.  So I'd say, yes, LePort is right in that we need to be aware that blogging is a public medium, and anything we say on a blog can be read by anyone. But it would be a shame if we allowed ourselves to become so worried about potential problems that we failed to see the advantages of blogging for fostering academic debate.That would be like staying at home with the door locked because you're scared of what may happen if you go outside.

C’mon sisters! Speak out!

When I give a talk, I like to allow time for questions. It’s not just a matter of politeness to the audience, though that is a factor. I find it helps me gauge how the talk has gone down: what points have people picked up on, are there things they didn’t get, and are there things I didn’t get? Quite often a question coming from left field gives me good ideas. Sometimes I’m challenged and that’s good too, as it helps me either improve my arguments or revise them. But here’s the thing. After virtually every talk I give there’s a small queue of people who want to ask me a private question. Typically they’ll say, “I didn’t like to ask you this in the question period, but…”, or “This probably isn’t a very sensible thing to ask, but…”. And the thing I’ve noticed is that they are almost always women. And very often I find myself saying, “I wish you’d asked that question in public, because I think there are lots of people in the audience who’d have been interested in what you have to say.”

I’m not an expert in gender studies or feminism, and most of my information about research on gender differences comes from Virginia Valian’s scholarly review, Why So Slow. Valian reviews studies confirming that women are less likely than men to speak out in question sessions in seminars. I have to say my experience in the field of psychology is rather different, and I'm pleased to work in a department where women’s voices are as likely to be heard as men’s. But there’s no doubt that this is not the norm for many disciplines, and I've attended conferences, and given talks, where 90% of questions come from men, even when they are a minority of the audience.

So what’s the explanation? Valian recounts personal experiences as well as research evidence that women are at risk of being ignored if they attempt to speak out, and so they learn to keep quiet. But, while I'm sure there is truth in that, I find myself irritated by what I see as a kind of passivity in my fellow women. It seems too easy to lay the blame at the feet of nasty men who treat you as if you are invisible. A deeper problem seems to be that women have been socially conditioned to be nervous of putting their heads above the parapet. It is really much easier to sit quietly in an audience and think your private thoughts than to share those thoughts with the world, because the world may judge you and find you lacking. If you ask women why they didn’t speak up in a seminar, they’ll often say that they didn’t think their question was important enough, or that it might have been wrong-headed. They want to live life safely and not draw attention to themselves. This affects participation in discussion and debate at all stages of academic life - see this description of anxiety about participating in student classes. Of course, this doesn’t only affect women, nor does it affect all women. But it affects enough women to create an imbalance in who gets heard.

We do need to change this. Verbal exchanges after lectures and seminars are an important part of academic life, and women need to participate fully. There’s no point in encouraging men to listen to women’s voices if the women never speak up. If you are one of those silent women, I urge you to make an effort to overcome your bashfulness. You’ll find it less terrifying than you imagine, and it gets easier with practice. Don’t ask questions just for the sake of it, but when a speaker sparks off an interesting thought, a challenging question, or just a need for clarification, speak out. We need to change the culture here so that the next generation of women feel at ease in engaging in verbal academic debate.