bandwagonesque* lurking
does anyone read this blog but not leave comments? i ask because today is "lurker day" on public sociology and crooked timber -- a time for readers who don't usually comment to say hi, register their likes and dislikes, ask questions, and raise any other issues. anyone can comment anonymously here, so i'm guessing that there aren't many lurkers. still, it seems like a good educative- democratic thing to do, so i'd love to hear from you!lurking is completely cool here (and actually kind of exciting), but did you know you can be arrested for lurking in minneapolis?
Lurking with the Intent to Commit a Crime. Minneapolis Ordinance 385.80. Lurking, no person, in any public or private place, shall lurk, lie in wait or be concealed with intent to do any mischief or to commit any crime or unlawful act. (Code 1960, As Amend. 870.050).
being charged with "lurking" seems to mean: (a) "you're up to no good;" and, (b) "we don't like the cut of your jib"; and, (c) "that's all we could get on you." online lurking, in contrast, is normatively prescribed behavior rather than proscribed deviance (i know, i'm such a deviance geek when i'm teaching this stuff):
Lurking - The activity of one of the "silent majority" in a electronic forum... posting occasionally or not at all but reading the group's postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking". Often used in "the lurkers", the hypothetical audience for the group's flamage-emitting regulars.Lurking and reading the FAQ are recommended netiquette for beginners who need to learn the history and practises of the group before posting.
actually, i'm betting it is a silent minority with this blog, but i'd love to know if anyone is reading who doesn't often post comments.
*"the bandwagon" is among my favorite adaptable cliches ("bandwagon departs in 5 minutes"; "REO Bandwagon," "rubber bandwagon"...) and teenage fanclub's bandwagonesque a favorite power pop album (after 30 seconds of alcoholiday the world looks a bit brighter to me, both in the "smart" and in the "sunny" sense of the word).
posted by christopher uggen @ 6:34 PM
17 comments
17 Comments:
Howdy!
I've been lurking for a few months now. I did speak up once to condemn your use of Powerpoint, but I usually prefer to remain a lurker. (There are just certain injuries to our society that we have to speak against.) I came across your blog while researching a play I was writing earlier this year. Your work on felon disenfranchisement was hugely helpful, and I’ve been meaning to send a thank-you note for months now. Thanks!
Ochen K.
I guess I would be a lurker who has never made a comment on your post. I've been reading for some time now. I really enjoy your blog, it's is a great change of pace during the day. It gives me my sociology-criminology-punk music of the 80s & 90s-contemporary art-teaching-running fix for the day.
this is my sole source of knowledge about the field of criminology. i figure if i read this blog i can save money on journal subscriptions. thanks.
howdy, ochen! i'm so sorry i missed your play! man, i could have done a field trip for that one. will there be more performances? could i get a bootleg dvd (i'd pay top dollar!)?
jim, that's so cool. can i use your sociology-criminology-punk music of the 80s & 90s-contemporary art-teaching-running fix on the masthead? maybe in the postmodern world one needn't do anything original so much as stir up the unoriginal bits into a discordant cacophony.
eric, your post gives me the willies, but it probably scares the holy bejeebers out of other criminologists.
I lurk, although ever since I found out you posted fake pictures of your pink Strat, I've realized I can't really trust anything I read here. :)
anyone can comment anonymously here, so i'm guessing that there aren't many lurkers
I don't think anonymity is necessarily the issue. Although people sometimes think that in the blogosphere everybody wants to talk, but no one cares to listen, stats seem to suggest that plenty of people read, but never write. If you have any stats about your site's visitors then you probably know that a small portion of those who stop by leave any comments. I certainly know this from my various blogs.
I also know, just from personal experience, that not leaving a comment has little to do with whether I found the reading inspiring/insightful/interesting or not. I'm not sure what prompts people to leave comments. I don't think this has been explored much as of yet and certainly not in any systematic way as far as I know. It would be interesting to know more about what motivates people to contribute.
jon, i'm so ashamed. my only defense is that my pink strat is way prettier than the one in the pic -- cooler vintage hardware plus mother-of-pearl pickgaurd. i guess i'll have to put up or shut up, though, so i'll have to figure out the camera.
eszter, thanks -- that makes a lot of sense. i'll try not to use "# of comments" as a proxy for interest or quality of a particular post. just for fun, i'll hypothesize a curvilinear relationship between "willingness to comment" and site traffic or "# of other commenters." For my part, I'd rather not be the first or only commenter, but I'd also rather not be the 361st to comment. adding a note to a half- dozen or so other comments, however, makes me feel part of a small group of far-flung friends or colleagues.
i could also see a reciprocity hypothesis: we are more likely to visit and comment upon sites that visit and comment upon our sites. anyway, i'm glad that smart sociologists are taking the blogosphere seriously. sometimes i fear we are *really* lagging behind on such phenomena. [i guess that a cheeky way to put it is that "the study of social interaction is too important to be left to the sociologists"]
I'm a huge lurker, and unapologetic for it. I love the blog, learn a lot, but don't always have insight to add.
You opened the door for some suggested topics, and I have a few (don’t know if they are appropriate for your blog, but I’ll list them nonetheless):
1) The politics of higher education (granted…you’ve touched on this in the past). I’m fascinated by this topic but can’t find an honest discussion. I wish PBS frontline would do something on it. Academics often cast away the “liberal bias” as nonsense, while conservatives see it as rampant. A graduate student instructor recently said to me that she was disappointed that half of her class was “Republican,” which interfered with the reading she picked for the class. I was livid, but kept my mouth shut. Why? Because I honestly feared ramifications if I suggested Republicans aren’t bad people. Am I overreacting?
2) I haven’t searched the blog archives, but what about commentary on recent books that tie in with your themes (e.g., crime, politics, publics)? I found Freakonomics curiously annoying yet very inspiring. I put down What’s the Matter with Kansas wondering if he got it all wrong (In my book “What’s the Matter with Wisconsin”, I draw attention to the pro-choice, divorced, minimally religious people who shun religious influence in government but vote for staunchly conservative candidates anyway…because they cut taxes!; kind of the opposite of Kansas).
Pardon the long reply, but since you asked...
Ok, I am decidedly a non-lurker here, BUT I did want to reassure anonymous that, based on my frequent useless contributions, one need not have any real insight to comment!
i'm not sure if my comment came across as joking. either way, i guess i need to master the art of including well placed smiley faces :)
anonymous, those are great ideas. thanks for lurking and sharing. the politics are such a minefield that one's motives are suspect for even raising a question (he must *really* have a conservative agenda to ask such things). not quite as bad as questioning the way we treat sex offenders, but in the same ballpark.
sarah's right, of course, on both the blogging and the commenting. one of my grad school mentors said i was smart but "intellectually lazy." i kick myself in the butt to overcome the laziness in my research, but like to preserve the blog as a lazy-friendly zone, so we all can exchange ideas as non-experts who don't really want to do the work it would take to become experts.
eric, that's why i joked about being a go-to criminology source. i'll always feel at home self-identifying as a criminologist as well as a sociologist, but my criminology is a pretty deviant variant.
the idea about the lurker's day is really cool. i didn't "stop and say hello" to other blogs i read (freese, pub sociology, eszter, schusman...), but it was interesting to read what other lurkers had to say.
i agree that blogging is something sociology didn't deal with in terms of research (at least none that i know of), but i would very much like to read some sociological interpretation of the blogosphere. it seems there are specific types of communities that are being created, and have their own background logic. a part of it would be the fact that people are prone to visit blogs that are related to their interests. i, for example, read only socio-blogs.
anyhow, chris, thumbs up for the blog. and a note about myself: sociology student (i'm sure you didn't expect that :-)) at the university of zagreb (croatia). and here's some stuff that i'm doing: editing a journal (www.diskrepancija.org/casopis), and administrating the web site of european sociology students' association (www.essa-sociology.org ; name: simulacrum). just so you know something about me as I know plenty about you. there should be some reciprocity. :-)
valerio, thanks for the comment and the links. you are *way* more ambitious and informed than i was (am?) as a student. from the essa website it looks like there are only one or two degrees of separation between us (e.g., i'm a wisconsin grad and you interviewed erik wright; essa gets soros o.s.i. support, as did i on my voting project). i've appreciated your comments, but thanks for reciprocating with some information about you and your work.
chris, really, i forgot you are a wisconsin graduate. and i like those two degrees of separation (http://www.eszter.com/erdos.html :-)). i was actually studying in wisconsin for a year, not in madison, though, but in eau claire. and guess whose fellowship i was on? osi’s! :-)
uni of wisconsin- madison is excellent, especially the sociology department. i went to madison many times, and enjoyed the city a lot. that's where i met erik, and arranged the interview. he actually came to zagreb in may, and held two lectures related to what we talked about in the interview. it was really great. it is not common in zagreb for academic lectures to be well visited, but for this one the lecture hall was crowded.
btw, i went once to theory@madison to see harold garfinkel. and it was quite of a surprise to see that there weren't that many people. and i thought there would be something like hundred people attending. i guess academic audience in zagreb is not bad after all. just kidding. :-)
yes, valerio is the anonymous in the previous post. :-)
hey valerio, it is sobering how few people turn out for a talk by a truly innovative sociologist, especially relative to audiences for minor cultural figures in other areas. only a handful would walk across the street for a free lecture by a garfinkel, in a town where thousands would pay $100 to see a garfunkel. i guess part of the problem is marketing and the other part is our teeny-tiny market. i did turn out to see garfinkel lecture, by the way, and came away dazed and confused.
so, you were there as well. it's funny that actually we've been there together, but did not know of each other. it definitely was a confusing lecture, along with the paper that participants were supposed to read beforehand.
as for the audience turnout, i agree with you about marketing and market. a few months ago, there was a related discussion at
"sconnie-sociology". about a similar issue when dorothy smith was in town. although they seemed to focus more on the gender issue.
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