gatewatching

Hi everybody. Ken Parish over at Club Troppo concurred somewhat with Tim Blair’s criticisms of us. I replied in the comments but it got marked as spam so I’m not sure when it’s gonna make it.

Here’s what I wrote.

Hi Ken.

I’m one of the researchers whose work you’re talking about here. Just a matter of housekeeping first - there seems to be a little confusion in your post here about blogs - one, Gatewatching, is a group blog involving Barry, Axel and I, but you do seem to mix that up in the post with Axel’s personal blog, Snurblog - I think Tim’s post conflates them slightly, too.

I’d direct you and your readers’ attention to my most recent response to Tim’s questions on Gatewatching, here. This makes clearer, I hope, the relationship between our ABC Opinion writing, our blogging, and the larger ARC project we’re involved in. I think Tim has managed to blur all of this pretty effectively, and I thought some clarification was necessary.

You may well appreciate that it’s easy to be stung into hasty responses when you’ve been “Blaired” - I’ve tried to answer Tim’s objection in good faith in the post linked to above - I’ll leave you to be the judge of whether I’ve succeeded. It must be said that Tim did talk about our work without seeking to confirm anything about our project with us - I hope the post I’ve directed you to corrects some of that.

Your own contribution here, which seeks to nuance our idea of left and right in the Australian blogosphere is incredibly useful, and your questions around notions of “community” etc. are fair ones. I won’t go too far into debating them here, but I’m happy to talk to you about it at some other stage. It should be stressed that we’ve never represented our opinion pieces or blog posts as final, formal research findings - stimulating this kind of response is one good reason for trying out our ideas in public.

In fairness to Axel’s research on Australia’s blogosphere, it’s the innovative methodology and the data he turned up which I think is the most important thing of all, and I assume that he’s sincere in saying he’d welcome other interpretations and readings of the data. This quantitative approach is, of course, not the only approach we’ll be taking - we’re also looking at blogging from a number of other angles, but Axel’s interest in this approach has been rewarded by what I think is an interesting and provocative paper.

I should add that the early part of our project has been practically-focussed - we spent the election campaign running youdecide2007, by which we hoped to get practical experience in the kinds of things that we’re researching, and also to try out some innovative methods of promoting online public affairs communities.

We are planning to interview Australian bloggers, and I’ve already interviewed a number - including some you mention like Sen. Bartlett and Tim Dunlop - and I’ve extended an invitation in my post to Tim for an interview, and I’d like to take the same opportunity in respect of yourself at this time.

I’d suggest finally, though, that your claim that the ARC is wasting its money is a little harsh. As I point out over on Gatewatching, the opinion stuff is done outside the bounds of the project proper, mainly because we’re so enthusiastic about being part of the conversation that’s being had about blogging in this country. Again, you’re entitled to your opinion, but perhaps a bit more information on the project would modify that opinion somewhat. I suppose it’s our fault that the scope of the project isn’t clearer - we’ll work on that, and hope that you’ll continue to monitor it with interest.