Blogging about books for ARJ: Tips on
content, style, and structure for online book reviews
Welcome
to the ARJ blog! The ARJ blog enables
members of the AR community to communicate our ideas more informally and
interactively, with the aim of promoting action research to a wider, more
diverse readership. Our vision is to
develop innovative, engaging, and openly accessible platforms for reflection on
and discussion of the work published in ARJ and elsewhere.
The
best academic blogs seek to engage and draw others into one’s own reflections
and thought processes. Whether blogging
about one’s own work, or reviewing another AR contribution, the point is to
connect with others, create space for healthy, constructive dialogue, encourage
reflection and collaboration, and bring new perspectives to one another’s
inquiry practice.
There
is no set formula for a good blog post, but we’ve put together some tips that
should help you to attract and maintain your readers’ interest. It is likely that your posts will engage with
a wider, more diverse, and to some extent, more ‘unknown’ audience than that
which you’d expect for journal articles or traditional book reviews. Accessibility, interest, and readability
are key.
An
ARJ ‘book review’ blog post offers an enticing “taster” of the work being
reviewed. Think about what others might
consider most interesting or relevant.
Are there particular anecdotes or insights from the publication—or
indeed, news stories or public debates relevant to it– which will whet your
readers’ appetite, and hook them into reading more? Try the following content tips:
· Stay
relevant: emphasise some
of the wider questions, issues, contexts and frameworks with which the work
interacts.
· Be
thought-provoking: highlight
the author’s passion for their subject, and if you share in it, your own! Let the reader know why it’s worth caring and
pondering about. Don’t be afraid to let
your own voice shine through.
· Invite
inquiry: begin to explore
new ideas emerging from the book, or to draw out points ripe for further
development or research.
· Encourage
conversation: if you wish
to open up a space for discussion about the book (and let’s face it, who
doesn’t want to talk about their favourite book or latest read with others?),
make sure to highlight key questions or points for debate. Encourage others to comment on your blog post
and get in touch.
· Make
links: both to your own
and others’ work, especially that published in ARJ, to encourage new readers to
stay and look around.
· ‘Gift’
your book review to the reader: if the book has been particularly helpful to you and to how your work
has developed, and has given you invaluable insights, guidance, or challenge
when you most needed it, say so! Help
others to benefit from the ideas presented in the book, and encourage them to
consider how it may support them in their own inquiries.
At
ARJ, we like the following style and
structure tips, adapted from Charlotte Mathiesen (2012)[1]:
·
Vocabulary. Technical terms should be avoided if possible, and
need definition where necessary.
·
Tone. Finding your own voice can take time, and it’s a personal matter how
informal or chatty you want to be. First-person is recommended, and an easy way
to give your blog post personality. A
good tip is to talk about the book as you would in conversation.
·
Write concisely. Consider how long you can maintain a reader’s interest
for. Blog posts vary in length, as the examples listed at the end show, but by
all means feel free to keep your posts for ARJ short and sweet.
·
References. Best kept to a minimum, if used at all. Linking to
external sources (via web hyperlinks) is a less intrusive way of referencing.
·
Begin with the most interesting content: a burning question that the book is
posing, or a crucial debate with which it’s engaging. Don’t save the best for
last - your reader might not get there! Make clear the book’s stance – and its
value and appeal – early on.
·
Break up the content: consider the visual readability on a web page. Short
paragraphs are easier to follow on the page and ensure you stay focused on the
topic.
·
Shorter sentences help maintain clarity, and posing
questions encourages reader engagement. If you can’t stop yourself waxing
lyrical about the book you are reviewing, and find yourself running vastly
over-length, consider using a series of related posts organised around a small
number of themes: use tags and links to maintain the continuity.
·
Use pictures, video and audio media to maintain interest. As well as giving us your intellectual and
practical take on the book you are reviewing, allow yourself to express the
emotional and aesthetic responses the book inspires in you. If the book evokes specific images, bits of
artwork, or other aspects of human creativity, physicality, and experience,
play around with ways of representing these. Richard Miller’s text2cloud blog
is a great example of how
innovative blogging can be.
is a great example of how
innovative blogging can be.
Note that we are
delighted for the ARJ blog to host multi-media posts, so do feel free to experiment and be as creative
as you like!
And finally, some examples of ‘academic blogging’ to
get you going…
Just a small
selection of academic blog posts to get you going. Some adopt a casual, witty style; others make
great use of images and diagrams; still others make compelling links with news
stories, pop culture, and polemical debates.
Some are more concise than others, and some are more explicit about
presenting or reflecting on a specific piece of research. Still others use the opportunity to tell
engaging stories which bring together research-relevant themes and concepts.
We’ve found that one of the
best ways to learn is to look at other blogs and decide what works best for you
and for your research. Have fun!
1.
A book
review by Emen William Garcia, for the
PolicyMic web forum (worth checking out!).
· “Liberal democracy yields public stupidity:
Defending Politics Book Review” http://www.policymic.com/articles/15941/liberal-democracy-yields-public-stupidity-defending-politics-book-review#
2.
A
couple of examples of Dr Ann Rippin’s (University of Bristol) blog on academic
quilting:
· “Collections, collecting,
and unexpected encounters” http://annjrippin.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/collections-collecting-and-unexpected-encounters/
3.
One previously published on the ARJ blog, from our very own Associate Editor, Victor Friedman. This post coincided with the publication of
the ARJ Special Issue on Art and Action Research, which Victor co-edited:
4.
A post by Prof Ingrid
Piller, of Macquarie University, Sydney, posted on the blog Language on the
Move:
· “Illegitimate English” http://www.languageonthemove.com/language-globalization/illegitimate-english?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=illegitimate-english
For many more examples of
blogs specifically presenting peer-reviewed academic research, see the
directory: http://www.researchblogging.org/
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment