Scholarly blogging practice as situated genre: an analytical framework based on genre theory

Introduction. Examines how an analytical framework of situated genre analysis can be used to study how research blogs are constructed and used as tools in scholarly communication. Method. A framework was extracted from genre research theories consisting of four concepts: aim, form, content and context. The term situated genre was used to focus on social practices. The context was further elaborated by combining discourse community with the concept of epistemic cultures. Analysis. The main purpose was to outline, discuss and test the framework. Three blogs from researchers in the field of physics were selected and used to test how the framework operated. Results. The preliminary results showed that scholarly blogs could be approached as a situated genre that is part of scholarly communication practice and that this framework can be used to analyse the social and technical features of the blogs. However, the framework has some constraints that have to be addressed. The four concepts are interlaced and can benefit from the application of a number of different methods. Conclusions. The proposed framework is useful as a tool for the analysis of research blogs and for making visible their socio-technical character. Existing genres in a particular epistemic culture, or differences between different epistemic cultures, are issues that could be studied further with this framework.