On a side note, I have decided to post preprints of several papers that I currently have in the works here shortly, mostly because the publication process is taking forever and I am getting impatient (two papers are set to appear in paper monographs, which is a ridiculously slow means of publishing that is still highly popular in the Humanities). As someone who is very much involved in investigating scholarly publishing and its future, I am becoming more and more convinced that paper-based publishing (1), closed-access distribution (2) and *our current form of peer review (3) are all aspects of scholarly communication that are in dire need of reform and improvement. The Internet won’t magically do away with all our problems, but conducting discussions of blogging practices in paper volumes is simply more idiosyncrasy than I can stomach.

* = Note that I am not questioning the essentiality of peer review, but the way we are currently conducting it.

Have a look at it here. I couldn’t fit it into a blog entry because, as you can see, it takes up quite a bit of screen space.

Thoughts?

Edit: don’t miss the comments.

Here’s one point in the piece that caught my attention in particular:

3. Being conversational is unnatural:

Being conversational is unnatural in business communications because we’ve been taught NOT to do it. Communication specialists are used to writing “Press Releases” and marketing web pages. The good news is that outside of work, employees are very good conversationalists, so they already know how to do it, they just need to break some of their Old Media habits. Training works very well in this area. Lastly, companies cannot forget the most important ingredient of a corporate blog — transparency. Corporate blogs are conversational and transparent, and therefore should NEVER be used to spew traditional marcom drivel.

I have been thinking about the style of blogs and corporate blogs in particular for almost two years now. The persistent chant ‘blogs are conversations’ and ‘conversational good, business-speak bad’ has a tendency to drive the professional linguist in me nuts, not because I don’t agree with these popular ideas, but because I keep wondering what exactly conversational means and why it is unequivocally regarded as ‘better’.

Now, as I am gradually approaching the completion of my thesis, I think can give a carefully weighed answer to that question.

Blogs are conversations? Partly yes, partly no

Firstly, when bloggers talk about ‘conversational’ what exactly do they mean?

Real-life conversations between human beings use many expressions that depend on the situational context to be understood. Things like that guy standing right there (so-called deictic expressions), false starts (And I was…. we didn’t go… No, Sue and I didn’t go to the meeting) and fillers (We need to… umm… discuss this in more detail) abound in face-to-face talk. Conversations also typically contains a lot of signals that serve purely to confirm and validate what your communicative partner is saying (things like yeah, okay, gotcha, right, uh-huh, nodding etc) and indicate your stance and social relationship. While conversations in TV shows, plays, novels and so forth are fast, witty and fluent, real conversations are often anything but – it’s just that we’re very good at ignoring all the noise they contain. We subconsciously filter out most of the static.

Blogs are obviously different in that blog entries are planned and not spontaneous (forget all the cutesy rhetoric associated with the word spontaneous for a moment – I use it to simply mean ‘instantly expressed’). Many bloggers, and most certainly the majority of corporate bloggers will read a post they have written thoroughly before publishing it. In the case of marketing and PR-oriented blogs and with executive blogs such as that of Jonathan Schwartz it is safe to assume that an entire team of communications professionals reads, discusses and edits posts collaboratively before they are published. There is planning and polishing involved, none of which is possible in real-time conversation.

So it’s not that aspect of blogs that makes us think of face-to-face conversations. What we associate with interpersonal communication is the interactive nature of blogs – in other words, that they enable a dialog between blogger and reader. Our reasoning goes: ‘I can respond to what someone writes in their blog, so it is basically like a conversation’. The other aspect is language; the content and style of writing that is associated with blogs. Note that point – blogs are written, not spoken language, which means that none of the ‘noise’ described above in occurs in them. Many things characteristic for spoken language never occur in blogs, especially not corporate ones.

Subjective as conversational

So apart from interactivity, what else is conversation-like about (corporate) blogs?

Have a look at this excerpt from One Louder, the blog of Microsoft staffing manager Heather Hamilton:

I’m not sure what has gotten into me other than the fact that I am happier than I have been for a VERY long time. It’s funny how sometimes things can just fall into place. The changes that I wanted to have happen at work happened without me doing much about it (other than saying “this is what I want”). I have finally started to spend some weekend time relaxing (and hanging with friends). And I am starting to believe what Eckhart Tolle says about coincidences not happening; it’s all for a reason (and with most of my life, I get the reasons for even some of the unpleasant things happening). Example: last week my manager and I were talking about me needing to travel to one of our dev centers. She recommended Ireland (oh yeah, I am totally doing that!) and I said “why don’t we have a dev center in Amsterdam? I really want to go there.” Then this week, I got an e-mail inviting me to speak at a conference in Amsterdam. How ’bout that? I’ve decided not to question what forces (if any) could be invovled with things like that happening. I’m just going to enjoy it.

In addition to business-related topics, Heather frequently writes about her personal feelings, thoughts and experiences in her blog, something that I’ve found to be typical of what I call ‘personal company blogs’. Such blogs are written by just one person, have a clearly visible reference to the blogger on the front page (name, photo) and are often part of a larger company blog hub (MSDN, in this case). In contrast to personal company blogs, team company blogs are usually about a specific product, issue or segment of the company and have several authors. I’ve found that writing about personal thoughts and feelings is less common in team blogs, largely because the topical focus of the blog tends to override personal concerns. By contrast, personal company blogs tend to be understood by their owners as diaries or journals where work-related subjects are integrated with personal thoughts.

Now, keep in mind how Heather writes and then have a look at this very interesting research on business English, conducted by Mike Nelson, an applied linguist at the University of Turku. Read Mike’s short article in the Guardian for a summary of his findings.

The kind of language used in corporate contexts (pre-blogging) is fairly strictly focused on a fixed set of topics. To quote Mike:

The world of business found in real life language is a limited one made up of business people, companies, institutions, money, business events, places of business, time, modes of communication and vocabulary concerned with technology. The language found was surprisingly positive, with very few negative words featuring at all. It was also found to be dynamic and action-orientated and non-emotive.

What Mike found via his large database of language samples from real-life business settings was that corporate language largely centers on things associated with business, namely business people, companies, institutions, money, business events, places of business, time et cetera and that these things are generally presented positively (business is about getting things done, not about being self-reflexive or critical). Finally, the subjective emotions of stakeholders aren’t really very important – private matters don’t feature into corporate discourse in any significant way.

Now compare that to how Heather writes. It’s a world of difference.

In posts marked with the ‘personal blogging’ tag, Heather writes about aspects of everyday life that we are all familiar with: buying furniture and cleaning out the garage, cheering for a sports team and experiencing a blackout. Not everything is always positive – there are ups and downs. Heather’s language can certainly be described as ‘emotive’ or ‘involved’, not because it is necessarily always highly emotional, but because it is concerned with inner processes more than with actions. All of this is obviously in stark contrast to what language in most other corporate contexts looks like.

There are a number of reasons why a ‘conversational’ style in that sense of the word is typical for both non-corporate and personal company blogs and why I expect it to have an influence on how institutions communicate, present themselves and are perceived in the future. I’ll focus on three basic pillars: audience, content and style.

Who you talk to

Blogs are a part of the Internet and the Internet provides virtually anyone with near-universal access to information. This may seem like a truism, but it has significant implications. Whereas before groups of stakeholder would be targeted individually and the flow of information was highly controlled, this is no longer the case in a networked world. A careful examination of the Google-Sicko story reveals a case of audience underfitting, i.e. a company employee addressing a specific audience but effectively reaching a much broader readership (and, in this case, not with a positive result).

The problem encountered is the extreme reach and transparency of online publishing. Because we are used to addressing either individuals or select communities of people, suddenly reaching a diffuse, invisible and potentially vast audience is not always easy to handle. This is especially problematic when you talk about people who are also your readers (see the Google example).

What you talk about

One notable aspect of Heather’s blog (and many others like it) is how openly it presents personal thoughts, experiences and feelings to readers. This is not necessarily done just for the audience. It seems that many personal company bloggers, though quite aware that their blogs are public, write partly to record their thoughts for themselves much in the same way that diarists do. The blog is a chronicle of what the blogger has thought, felt and done over time, both personally and professionally. Not every personal detail imaginable is presented, but there is no strict (and artificial) separation of personal and professional topics. Independently of how bloggers conceptualize audience, the effect of sharing personal information is that it lays the foundation for relationship-building.

Being told the subjective impressions, thoughts and emotions of another human being is almost inevitably relevant to us because we value such social information very highly. Knowing personal aspects of someone’s life brings us closer to them and establishes ties which are the foundation of any interpersonal relationship. This is especially pivotal on the Internet where all voices are detached from the individuals who use them. Social information enables us to establish a relationship with someone whom we have never met, because what we know about someone allows us to draw an increasingly complete picture of what kind of person they are.

Social information as a universal currency is especially valuable in a globalized and networked world, because exchanging it builds trust and without trust the foundation for other interactions is lacking.

How you say it

There is a persistent belief that jargon, technical language and other forms of special purpose lingo exist purely to irritate those of us who don’t understand it. That’s not true quite true though – medical language or legalese may have that effect on people who aren’t doctors or lawyers, but among those who speak  them these varieties are readily understood and used for plausible reasons. Jargon allows us to

• delineate membership in an expert community (techies, lawyers, bloggers…)
• describe aspects of our work/community/culture/shared experience with more perceived precision than ‘standard’ language allows

In other words, we often feel that what we want to say is said more effectively when we use a specialized vocabulary developed to express it. While this is unproblematic as long as we are talking to others who share our knowledge, this instantly turns into an issue when we address a broader audience – which is inevitably the case with a blog. All of a sudden, use of a specialized terminology makes us aloof, arrogant and out of touch. Audience underfitting once again leads to problems, this time in stylistic terms.

Finally, ‘conversational’ in stylistic terms also implies the use of colloquialisms, figures of speech and other expressive elements which are typically found in spoken conversation. The effect of such devices is again that they allow blogger and audience to conceptualize the blog as a speech situation, amplifying feelings of solidarity and familiarity.

What ‘conversational’ can mean

To summarize, ‘conversational’ can mean a range of things when applied to blogs. Among them are:

• interactivity – it can describe the dialogic structure of blogs and the possibility to respond to contributions
• speaker and audience – it can describe the discourse situation that the blog creates on a technical level and the resulting possibility for the blogger to refer to himself/herself (“I”) and address his/her readers (“you”)
• content – it can describe a focus on personal and everyday topics which are familiar to a broad audience and create a feeling of solidarity and familiarity with the blogger
• style – it can describe the avoidance of jargon and technical language (due to its audience-restrictiveness) in favor of expressions that evoke spoken language and real-life conversation

As always, feedback is appreciated.

1. go to Google Scholar and search for articles and books
2. use the link resolver to see if my local library has access
3. go to the publisher’s page
4. download not only the citation but the entire article with Zotero

Zotero is truly awesome once you use it in that way – not just as a bibliographic database, but as a digital archive. And as I found out, my university library has a very good selection. The only trouble is that many researchers may not be aware at all that the access they have is provided to them by their library. “We don’t need you any more – everything is available on the Internet these days” seems to be a phrase that librarians frequently hear these days. If there is a party involved in the discussion over Open Access and how we treat scientific information that desperately needs to wake up, it isn’t librarians or the publishing houses. It’s the bulk of researchers out there.

So that’s what I’ll do. Whether you’re a company blogger, PR pro, consultant, or just someone who reads company blogs, I would be grateful for your response to the following question:

Under what circumstances would you describe a corporate blog as fake?

This is not just a random opinion poll. I am writing a research article at the moment and one of my central questions is what expectations people have towards blogs, why companies find blogs attractive for public-facing communication and what exactly happens when a company is accused of “faking” a blog. So your responses have a very real chance of benefiting my research and being cited.

You can either post a comment here, ping me through your own blog or send me an email – whatever works best for you.

Thanks a lot in advance and do pass this on!

As usual, here are the slides.

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A few interesting questions were raised after the talk, such as how wikis and blogs relate to one another in an organizational context and how researchers use blogs. I think it depends on the organization and the task, but both blogs and wikis can (and should) certainly be used side by side. At least in my mind, wikis are a little more information-centric, whereas blogs are more person-centric. Coherence and connectedness are essential in a wiki, whereas the structure in a blog is chronological and hard-coded. One item comes after the other and basically there is no assumption that there has to be a coherent structure at all, other than then one that is naturally imposed by time. This may mean more individual freedom to some and too little structure to others – it all depends on your personal point of view. I really can’t stress enough how extremely individual tastes are when it comes to information management. Blogs and wikis can both be used in great ways together and frankly I’m wondering more about those people and organizations that use neither than about those that use one of the two or both.Regarding researchers and blogs – the short answer, in my view, is that they don’t use them nearly enough. But then, from a purely egoistical point of view that’s nothing I should be complaining about. This morning I chatted with a good friend who uses blogs intensively for teaching at the university level. She started about a year ago and introduced all sorts of blog-based tasks into her students’ coursework. They absolutely love it. She’s a great teacher and using blogs has made her classes even more popular. Recently she was invited to do a course for educators on how to use blogs for teaching at another university. She is essentially an expert on the subject now, simply because she has recognized the potential of a new technology that many of her colleagues are still unaware of.

I don’t believe that education and science will change over night because of social software, simply because institutions are fairly resistant to change (people are). Often this isn’t because we’re lazy either, but because we see no need to meddle with a system that we think works. But of course the ways we learn and do research will change fundamentally in the next twenty years or so. Symptomatically, I just need to look at how I do research using Google Scholar, del.icio.us, Zotero and my blog and I can see the writing on the wall. I use these tools because they allow me to be better at what I do and others will eventually use them for the same reason. And who knows, maybe those of us who got into it early will have a little head start.

To recap: Lilia Efimova invited me to hold a talk on corporate blogging at the Telematica Instituut in Enschede, which is only about 2.5 hours from where I do my work. We got in touch through our blogs and given that we both research corporate blogging it felt totally natural to get together and pick each other’s brains. I keep finding again and again that few things really connect people quite the same way that nerdy research interests do.

Lilia introduced me to Anjo Anjewierden, who (among many other thing) works on ways of visualizing blog data and has developed the very nifty text analysis package tOKo. I also met bloggers Ton Zijlstra and Elmine Wijnia with whom I had the chance to chat after the talk. I’m always vastly impressed by people who have been blogging for several years. Me, I tend to feel proud that I’ve managed to post in more or less regular intervals for roughly a year now, but a year seems so little compared with all the writing that many of the “veterans” have under their belts.

Check out the slides for the talk:

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Anjo made an excellent point after the presentation by asking what a flog is (I use the word in the title of the presentation). Note to self: it’s a good idea to occasionally explain the neologisms that you carelessly throw about.There’s quite a bit of trip-associated homework that I need to do today, but I promise to post more on some of the things I have been pondering lately very soon. Thanks once more to Lilia, Robert and Alexander for letting me stay at their place and for wining and dining me! I’m looking forward to hosting you (ideally all of you, but for that I need a bigger apartment) in the future.

Thanks to my colleague Carolina Grünschloß for letting me know about this. Carolina is writing her PhD thesis in economics about CSR strategies of western companies in Japan, so if you’re interested in exchanging ideas don’t hesitate to get in touch with her.

BSR is also organizing a conference in San Francisco in October that you may find interesting.

Robert Sprague (2007). Business Blogs and Commercial Speech: A New Analytical Framework for the 21st Century. American Business Law Journal 44 (1), 127–159. PDF from Blackwell

As the title already suggests, the article is concerned with the legal implications of business blogging in the U.S., specifically with the question of whether company blogs always qualify as commercial speech and should thus receive only limited constitutional protection. Sprague argues that the nature of how companies communicate with the public has been broadened significantly through blogs:

A substantial amount of business-related dialogue is beginning to occur on blogs and the number of blogs sponsored by businesses is growing. This increase raises questions about the level of constitutional protection afforded to information contained in the blogs. Speech by businesses has generally been regarded as commercial speech because it has traditionally taken the form of directly promoting a product or service by providing information about that product or service. Modern marketing strategies and recent technological developments, such as blogs, are transforming the nature of commercial speech. Businesses now often communicate with their customers without providing any specific information regarding their products or services. Although commercial speech has received limited constitutional protection since 1975, the commercial speech doctrine has not effectively evolved beyond the notion that speech by businesses is advertising subject to regulation. [...] Modern businesses are using Internet technologies, particularly blogs, to engage in dialogues with the public. The key issue is whether all speech by a business should continue to be relegated to the commercial speech doctrine.

p. 127

In other words, there isn’t really a legal precedent for the kind of communication that companies are conducting via blogs, as it becomes increasingly clear that blogs are used for more than just advertising.

The growth of business blogs, coupled with the unique cultural aspects of the blogosphere, raises a number of legal issues. Specifically, is the dialogue in which a company participates on a blog always commercial speech? Should some business blogs enjoy First Amendment protection or should most business blogs be subject to laws prohibiting false or deceptive advertising or other government regulation? The deceptive trade practices standards are quite low, generally requiring only a material representation or omission that is likely to mislead the customer. The critical issue is whether all speech on a blog that is in any way associated with a business will be considered commercial speech, subject to the commercial speech doctrine in its present incarnation.

p. 134

Even if you aren’t a legal expert it isn’t hard to interpret a material representation or omission that is likely to mislead the customer as a fairly broad category. Perhaps your CEO’s blog is triple-checked by the legal department, but what if you run a few thousand employee blogs? And does documentation, knowledge blogging and communication with stakeholders (say, if you’re a tech company) really constitute commercial speech?

The critical issue for businesses is whether the content in its blogs should be characterized as commercial speech. Companies may express support for efforts to minimize global warming; employees may post messages on a company-sponsored blog about the company’s sponsorship of sweatshop labor; ‘‘product evangelists’’ for a company may comment on various blogs regarding Internet security; corporate counsel for an Internet communication company may post comments about the Chinese government’s censorship of blogs. Whether any of these blog postings would constitute commercial speech merely because they originate or are related to corporate sponsorship is unresolved.
Should the regulated marketplace of products and services, rather than the unregulated marketplace of ideas, be the arbiter of the truth of these blog comments? If the examples listed above are considered commercial speech, then the companies may be subject to scrutiny under laws relating to false advertising or deceptive trade practices, as well as other government regulations.

p. 136

Sprague continues with a detailed analysis of what constitutes commercial speech (the definition is, as one might have guessed, quite fuzzy). Things get complicated quickly, as a case involving Nike shows:

Specifically, the California Supreme Court held that Nike’s statements constituted commercial speech because: (1) Nike, because it is engaged in commerce, is a commercial speaker; (2) Nike’s statements were addressed directly to actual and potential purchasers of its products (a commercial audience); and (3) Nike’s representations of fact were of a commercial nature because it described its own labor policies and the practices and working conditions in factories where its products are made. [...] The case was settled by the parties. As a result, an opportunity was missed to address a critical issue related to commercial speech whether statements made by commercial enterprises which do not directly promote a product or service, but instead comment on social issues and general business practices, are commercial speech.

p. 147

Nike ran an image campaign to meet criticism that was the result of their production practices overseas. The question that remained unresolved was whether such a campaign constituted commercial speech, since one aspect (a product being advertised) was missing from the picture.

The complexity of classification lies in the fact that commercial speech is most often a form of mixed or hybrid speech, including both commercial and noncommercial elements. The commercial element, the primary purpose of which is to persuade consumers to buy goods, may be regulated, while the method by which such speech is communicated is usually considered protected. As one commentator has explained, ‘‘[t]he Supreme Court’s inability to encase commercial speech within unwavering definitional boundaries is not the product of ineptitude, but rather the unavoidable incident of commercial speech’s position at the blurry crossroads of expressive and economic activity.’’ Legal issues regarding the protection of speech in blogs sit squarely within these crossroads. Blogs are a prime example of how new methods of communication have transformed the commercial environment, thereby increasing the difficulty of distinguishing commercial from noncommercial speech. Businesses increasingly combine entertainment, advertising, and public elations efforts in their overall marketing strategies. Advertising the availability or characteristics of a product or service and its price is a method that has been replaced with ‘‘a movement toward viewing communications as the management of the customer buying process over time, during the preselling, selling, consuming, and postconsuming stages.’’ Public relations, promoting a company’s image, is recognized as just one element in the mix of marketing communications companies should utilize. While advertising is designed to be repetitive, persuasive, and focused on specific products or services, public relations efforts generally have a higher level of credibility, as the message may reach potential customers as news rather than as advertisements. Blogs fit the trend toward a broader view of marketing. They are being viewed as an ideal ‘‘forum for conveying the company’s values, attitude, positions and additional content that other communications vehicles don’t.’’ Blogs also have the ability to simulate advantages of word-of-mouth marketing, a form of advertising that many companies find articularly appealing as it simulates the influence of recommendations by a friend or social contact.

p. 149-150

As Sprague observes, if blogging always constitutes commercial speech (and thus has only limited or no constitutional protection), the legal situation in an exchange between the public blogosphere and a company is asymetrical:

Under the current commercial speech doctrine, individuals who criticize a business’ products or services or business practices enjoy a much higher level of speech protection than the businesses they discuss. With the growth of blogs, customers and noncustomers alike have an ever-expanding universe, both in size and influence, in which to publish their messages with near immunity. The U.S. Supreme Court stated in Gertz v. Welch, ‘‘Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.’’ Thus, while false statements of fact do not necessarily deserve full constitutional protection, the Supreme Court recognizes they are nevertheless ‘‘inevitable in free debate.’’ In Gertz, the Court stated, ‘‘The First Amendment requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters.’’ [...]

Under the current commercial speech doctrine, there is no clear classification scheme that effectively delineates commercial speech from noncommercial speech. In effect, any time a business communicates through a blog, it risks being sued on the basis that the public is likely to be deceived.

p. 154

Sprague continues by developing a three-tier system to classify blogs. He divides contributions in corporate blogs into three functional categories:

1. Marketing
2. PR
3. Social Commentary

(if you want a comparison, have a look at my own proposed classification scheme here and here)
In his view the first two types of writing should be labeled as commercial speech, with the limitations in regards to constitutional protection that this entails. The last category, social commentary, should be interpreted as more than commercial speech and thus be covered by the First Amendment. As is always the problem with such frameworks – especially with genres of writing and how to classify them – the million-dollar question is: how do we distinguish between the different types?

Firstly, there’s the question of whether there is such a thing as disinterested, general-purpose social commentary in a company’s official communication. A corporation exists primarily to serve the interests of it’s owners and the core interest is usually to make a profit. If the criterion for Sprague’s social commentary category is the absence of any benefit for the company, it will be very hard to find a corporate blog that neatly fits the category. Any employee blog is potentially beneficial for the company’s image (if it says something nice) and potentially damaging (if it says something bad). And since Robert Scoble we know that it can even be beneficial if it says something bad – the fact that Scoble was free to criticize Microsoft in an official company blog made his employer look more open, responsive and modest. So benefit can clearly not be a criterion on its own, because how exactly a positive effect is achieved when it comes to how a company is publicly regarded is difficult to predict.

Perhaps intent is the key. If there is a conscious, visible intent to sell a product (marketing) or make a company look good (PR) that could arguably be described as commercial speech and treated accordingly. If there is no visible intent and beneficial effects for the company are indirect – say, an employee blogs about his work mixed with personal thoughts and opinions in a way that raises the profile of the company and attracts customers – the social commentary classification would perhaps work.

Sprague suggests that the emphasis should shift from who writes something to what it is they are writing about. That sounds good in theory, but I believe that the best approach is to pinpoint who is writing together with intended audience and communicative purpose in a sort of matrix. The fact that something was written by someone from the marketing department is clearly an argument for commercial speech, no matter the text itself looks like. Following that logic, a sales pitch (1) from a marketer (2) that is clearly targeting pharma companies (3) exemplifies commercial speech, while the review of a TV show (1) coming from a staffing manager (2) that could potentially be relevant to anyone interested in that show (3) does not.

But then again, at least for now, the question of how we classify blogs in a corporate context may just boil down to a known paradigm in law.

We are currently conducting research into the topic of internal blogging within companies. As part of this study we are inviting company bloggers to complete a short questionnaire in the form of an online survey available at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ZnU4C0g9B6oWQjeG5fGJog_3d_3d

The questions deal with some general questions about your blog, about your motivation to blog and the impact of your blog. All data collected will be anonymous, and in the written report of the research it will not be possible to identify the individuals who contributed to the study, nor their affiliations.

Should you be interested in the findings of the research once it is complete, there is a place on the survey to leave your email address to which a report will be sent. If you have any questions about the work, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you for participating

Mareike is being advised by Hazel Hall who has published extensively on knowledge management in institutional environments. Given that enough people participate (and it looks promising, as Mareike told me via email) this should produce quite interesting data.