Introducing Blogs
August 2006 Newsletter
Andrea K. Gerlak, Director of Academic Development
Blogs are increasingly being used to enhance web-based communication. According to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, a weblog, typically shortened to blog, is a “website where regular entries are made and presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs often offer commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries.” Entries in a blog are commonly referred to as “postings”. Postings follow postings on the blog, providing a virtual bulletin board of communications. Perhaps you have already assigned a blog to students in one of your classes, or you’ve looked at some of the more popular political blogs on the web (See our list of International Studies and International Relations blogs at http://isapraxis.blogspot.com/).
Some members of ISA are finding blogs can serve a number of communication functions. In recent months, sections and regions have begun to use blogs to communicate information to members and facilitate dialogue. Blogs can serve as a channel of information from section officers to members by providing frequent and timely updates. Because they provide a permanent web archive of previous postings, they also provide a record of events or communications. Perhaps most importantly, blogs can facilitate interaction between members by allowing members to offer feedback to an initial posting. Among the many purposes, ISA sections and regions can use blogs to announce upcoming meetings and workshops, solicit nominations for awards and officer vacancies, list job announcements, and promote panel organizing efforts.
Frequent visitors to the ISA website are familiar with the "What's New at ISA" link that directs them to the ISA News blog (http://isanet.blogspot.com/) where we post links to the latest calls for papers, conference announcements, region and section news, and news from the field of international studies. Feel free to send us your section or region news you would like posted to the ISA News blog. In 2005, ISA also created a group blog for our members to use as a discussion forum. If members are interested in using this vehicle for communication, please see http://isapraxis.blogspot.com/
Creators of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies blog, hope their members will use their blog like an e-mail list where they would sign up to get an e-mail every time there was a new post to the blog. Section members would then go to the blog and comment on the e-mail as appropriate. Most recently, section leaders found their blog was used to help organize panels for the 2007 ISA meetings. Members posted initial ideas for panels. Some responded and a proposed panel was formed.
This is exactly what ISA member Patrick Jackson had in mind when he and a team of his graduate students at American University created two blogs earlier this year. The blogs were designed to increase opportunities for interactions among scholars from different geographical regions and at different stages in their academic careers. Thought to be an area where people interested in the many questions about international relations can put up requests for fellow panel members with similar interests, blogs were created for both the 2007 ISA annual meeting and the 2006 Northeast ISA meeting. For the 2007 annual meeting, there were at least a dozen postings on the ISA panel blog. To see the exchanges, please visit http://isapanels.blogspot.com (ISA panel blog) and http://isanepanels.blogspot.com ( ISA NE blog).
The idea is catching on. The Women’s Caucus recently launched their blog (see http://www.isawcis.blogspot.com/). And a blog is in the works for the International Organization section (see http://isaionet.blogspot.com/). If you interested in setting up a blog for your section or region, please let us know. ISA Headquarters would be pleased to create the blog for you. Please note that your blog can be configured as a private blog or it can be public (and listed in the Index of Public Blogs hosted on blogger.com). It cannot be password protected. One person can post to the blog or a team of section leaders can post to the blog. If you want your blog to be really low hassle, you can simply send your postings to ISA Headquarters and we can post them on your behalf.
