Academics online: Their interests and foibles

Faculty and staff are participating in blogs and online discussions in greater numbers, but this involvement is poorly understood. This study used content analysis to evaluate 40 online discussions hosted on The Chronicle of Higher Education website. The majority (n = 22) of discussions had as their main topics the personal and professional lives of faculty, 80% (n = 32) of the discussions did not last for more than one month, and 15% (n = 6) of the discussions experienced hijacking. Fifteen of the discussions (37.5%) had evidence of the “online disinhibition effect,” with negative comments about authors, mild comments about other posters, and personal and rude comments about others in the discussion.