A little venting.

All this talk of new world orders and change and cutting out the middle man has got me thinking.

Perhaps in this subject it’s ok to not get right into the Communication Theory, but it’s really not ok in the wider world of university research. Which, when you’re writing about grassroots movements, neo-crafters and the handmade, is a bit of an issue. The whole idea of user-generated content and democracy and level playing fields is incredibly undemocratic within the context of traditional establishments of higher learning. I know we sort of touched on this in the first lecture, but in trying to suss out journal articles and capital-A Academic writing about my masters topic, I seem to have run into a couple of problems.

There are definitely articles out there on online communities and the way they work, but the ones I’ve found are pretty theoretical in nature. And they’re definitely not written by the people who are part of the communities. They’re written by academics, largely working within the traditional academic publishing world of referenced journals. Which generally means that the work they’re producing is of a very high standard. All very well. But when the people I’m really interested in looking at don’t have PhDs or access to the review panels of respected journals, it becomes a little trickier. Especially when they’re not crackpots. They’re thoughtful, intelligent, and often very well-educated, but they spend their time in the world of home studios and weekend markets rather than in tertiary classrooms.

Of course, there’s always the chance that the research I’m pining for is out there somewhere and I’m yet to find it. But I still think the point about user-generated content is a good one…