Just wanted to mention or add briefly to the conversation that:
a. There is no such thing as a blog. If anything, there are online and offline programs like wordpress that allow people to self-publish. There are almost as many different ideas of what a blog is or how it operates as there are "blogs" out there in the world.
b. People use blogs for different things and apply them in different ways into their lives. Academics are no different.
c. This whole dilemma about peer-reviewed vs non-peer-reviewed... If we apply (a) above, it follows that there are good blogs and bad, inaccurate, slanderous blogs. But in the same fashion, we all know that we have read supposedly peer-reviewed literature that is bad, inaccurate, slanderous, etc.
d. I'm not saying let's stop worrying and learn to love blogs, but look at some of our very own "greatest hit" geographers, such as Derek Gregory and Stephen Graham, as well as many others, are known to use blogs as part of their literature review.
e. What is really worrisome is when there are academics that consistently use blogs as part of their research, and then don't give credit for it.
So, it might be time not to learn to love blogs (after all, evidence shows that blogs, if they ever existed, are on the wane), but to learn to make space for all sorts of digital media as part of a research process.
Cheers,
J.
