I just signed a petition calling for Norwegian universities to use research expertise on AI when deciding how to implement it, rather than having decisions be made mostly administratively. , If you are a researcher in Norway, please read it and sign it if you agree – and share with anyone else who might be interested. The petition was written by three researchers at UiT: Maria Danielsen (a philosopher who completed her PhD in 2025 on AI and ethics, including discussions of art and working life), Knut Ørke (Norwegian as a second language), and Holger Pötzsch (a professor of media studies with many years of research on digital media, video games, disruption, and working life, among other topics). This is not about preventing researchers from exploring AI methods in their research. It is about not uncritically accepting the hype that everyone must use AI everywhere without critical reflection. It is about not introducing Copilot as the default option in word processors, or training PhD candidates to believe they will fall behind if they do not use AI when writing articles, without proper academic discussion. Changes like these should be knowledge-based and discussed academically, not merely decided administratively, because they alter the epistemological foundations of research. Maria wrote to me a couple of months ago because she had read my opinion piece in Aftenposten in which I called for a strong brake on the use of language models in knowledge work. She was part of a committee tasked with developing UiT’s AI strategy and was concerned because there was so much hype and so few members of the committee with actual expertise in AI. I fully support the petition. There are probably some good uses for AI in research, but the uncritical, hype-driven insistence that we must simply adopt it everywhere is highly risky. There are many researchers in Norway with strong expertise in AI, language, ethics, working life, and culture. We must make use of this expertise. This is also partly about respect for research in the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and law. Introducing AI at universities and university colleges is not merely a technical issue, and perhaps not even primarily a technical one. It concerns much more: philosophy of science, methodological reflection, epistemology, writing, publishing, the working environment, and more. […]
collin
I’ve just started up blogging again in the past month or so, and I’ve definitely noticed some of what you’re talking about. This is all napkin theorizing, but my sense is that it’s moved from the inbox model of RSS readers to the streams of FB and Twitter. That’s where I find most of the things I read as well. And I use Instapaper a lot to read the things I find there.
And folks have different rules/expectations for their streams–I can sub to a blog through a reader without needing them to confirm me as a friend, for example 🙂 The timing of announcing posts on Twitter or FB can easily get drowned out by conference live-tweeting or the latest memes. And it feels like there’s less serendipity involved–less burst, more flow.
Don’t know that either model is necessarily better, but it does feel like the instant gratification of the trending topic has overtaken what we used to think of as the blogosphere…
Good luck with the revisions!
cgb
Steven D. Krause
I chaired a roundtable discussion at the computers and writing conference last May called “Is Blogging Dead? Yes, No, Other.” Here’s a link to my video that sums up my 3 minute spiel:
http://youtu.be/FMho4-sO4Lk
I think that blogs have started to function differently in that now what folks are doing is posting content there and then pushing people to it via social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. So yeah, I think you’re basically right here.
Jill
Steven, that’s a great summary. From visiting blogs individually, via RSS feeds, as Collin notes, to, now, finding blog posts on Twitter and Facebook. I like your idea, Steven, that perhaps “blogging” the activity has moved to other social media, but that the noun “blog” still exists to describe the things we talk about in those other spaces?
I also found an interesting post by Amber Naslund, about how comments and immediate responses are no longer common (although you CAN get this on Twitter – but then the responses are usually much less rich, often just simple retweets). Amber says she thinks of blogs as quieter more inspirational spaces (?)
So blogs are perhaps taking some of the role that books used to take? Slow, sustained reading? Hm. I’m not sure about that.
David Berry
You might find these post interesting:
http://stunlaw.blogspot.no/2011/02/ontology-of-twitter.html
and
http://stunlaw.blogspot.no/2011/01/real-time-streams-and-cloud.html
Anne Helmond
Interesting question. In a study on the history of the Dutch blogosphere we visualized the Dutch blogosphere between 1999-2009, which allows to see the rise and decline of the Dutch blogosphere, and the increasing role of social media platforms as actors in the blogosphere.
We coded all the social media platforms per year which you can view here: https://dutchblogosphere.digitalmethods.net/gatlas/
I’ll try to produce a dynamic graph out of it (which has been on my todo list for ages now).
While these networks show the outlinks from blogs to social media platforms, and not the inlinks caused by discovering blogs through Twitter or Facebook, it does show how ‘traditional’ blog networks are in decline, over the social media platforms.
The full paper is online at First Monday: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3775/3142
The graphics and data and visualized networks are online here: https://dutchblogosphere.digitalmethods.net/
https://dutchblogosphere.digitalmethods.net/gatlas/
William Patrick Wend
My blogging has changed a lot over the years. I rarely blog about “personal” issues anymore. This is partially because of the rather public nature of my blog (I would say over 50% of my students know about it somehow), but mostly because I don’t care to post about that stuff anymore.
Nowadays, like earlier commenters, I use my blog to “push” content to other places. I rarely get comments, never really did, but I do get some via Twitter, G+, etc. My blog also serves as a public display of my academic work. That actually came up during one of the interviews for my current position. I find out about other people’s work primarily through Twitter these days.
I do remember those early days of going through other people’s blogrolls for useful people. I’m finding that a lot of bloggers don’t seem to even update their blogrolls anymore. I have not updated mine in awhile.
Bryan Alexander
Some of my blogging practices have moved to other venues. Like William, I’ve shifted personal content – mostly to Facebook.
I’ve also narrowed down each blog’s focus. Things that fall between those foci end up on G+.
Jill
So blogs are becoming more specialised? Rather than having a single life stream we’re segregating our content into private –> Facebook, professional –> blog, discussion and quick links –> Twitter?
Mattias Klang actually blogged a comment to this, just like in the good old days 😉 He asks the lack of linking between blogs will actually break the web. I suspect maybe the number of links varies from sector to sector – I mean, in different kinds of blogs?
Mathias Klang
For me finding news/information is mainly done via my rss, twitter & facebook. Of these Twitter is the most active. If I find anything useful via Twitter I will add rss to my feed but I do not look at the “static” links on peoples blogs and have removed them from mine (because I dont see the use for them).
I’ve seen quite a few people write that they are returning to blogging after a period on Twitter and I feel that I have begun doing the same.
Blogging is no longer as central as it once was – but it does give people something to tweet about. Hardly an exoskeleton but still valuable.
Jill
Right, what would we tweet about without blogs!? 🙂