Professors use online blogs to foster new ideas

English professor Jeff Nunokawa has a facebook.com account, but he doesn't use it for the same reason his students do. For him, it's a blog.

Some University professors have begun to post their musings online in recent years. While the regularity of their posts and the professionalism of their prose differ, they have all entered the "blogosphere."

Nunokawa, a Yale graduate and former literature professor, posts on Facebook at least once a day. His topics vary widely, but they are rarely directly related to his academic work. One recent post, consisting of three lengthy paragraphs, considers Yeats, Auden and "the imperative mood in ancient Greek."

Another post reads,"1. Did Cain feel bad about killing Abel? 2. Who thought a remake of 'The Poseidon Adventure' was a good idea?" Popular films, art, literature and the Nixon administration are recurring themes.

"It's a separate but certainly not unrelated type of writing from professional writing," Nunokawa said. "It helps to ruminate and get feedback and just collect ideas."

Students also read his posts. Nunokawa said he tells his classes that he uses Facebook, "just so that they know and can go take a look if they're interested. I'm surprised and pleased by how often a student I know — or sometimes don't know — writes something quite striking as a response."

Professors from across the University's academic departments also contribute to the "blogosphere." Computer science professor Ed Felten has his own blog; molecular biology professor Lee Silver writes for ScientificBlogging.com; and Wilson School professor John Ikenberry contributes to TPMcafe.com, a site that bills itself as "a public meeting place to read about and discuss politics, culture, and public life in the United States."

While Nunokawa started using Facebook only in recent months as "just a vehicle for my thoughts — I don't really know anything at all about computers or blogging," Felten said he has been writing on his blog "Freedom to Tinker" since 2002.

Felten, too, divides his writing between academic work and other topics.

"It's an extension of my mainstream academic work," Felten explained in an email. "Often, ideas that first appeared on the blog end up in my academic papers."

"I use it to discuss issues of interest, mostly relating to technology and public policy," Felten added. "Sometimes I use it to 'talk through' ideas that are still under development. Generally I write about whatever is of interest to me at the moment, in the hope that my readers will find it interesting too."

All of the professors write for what they see as a broad audience. "The intended audience is a combination of technologists, policy people and interested members of the public," Felten said. "I try to keep most items accessible to non-experts."

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For Nunokawa, the audience is more limited in size, though not by intent. "I guess it's really just whoever can see my Facebook posts, so largely people within the Princeton community," he said. This includes "students, mostly, and some others. I really just enjoy that such a large proportion of them have thought-provoking things to say."

Nunokawa has 112 Facebook "friends" at Princeton, and he has 15 in other networks. He is also a member of five groups, four of which he created: "Really Interesting Film Theory," "Too Bad It's So Hard to Find Hawaii – 50 Reruns," "Erving Goffman's Cool" and "The Lionel Trilling Fan Club."