Jacob Christensen

Provided there are no technical hiccups, I will be live (and later available through a podcast) with Messrs Guan Yang and Steffen Christensen at 20:00 CEST at http://podcast.dk/live discussing the Danish election. The conversation will – AFAIK – be in Danish.

For those of you not on Tumblr.

Update: The jokers are really on a roll today. Here’s Lars and Helle debating.

PS: No, I’m not the person behind the Tumblr-blog. But I know who it is

Also published on Ideas on Europe.

Prompted by a question by Kosmopolit, some considerations about academic blogging and my own history.

First, an observation: It is fair to say that Denmark does not have an academic blogosphere like the one we can find in some other countries. Curiously, I know a number of Swedish political scientists (and economists) who maintain their own blogs – check my blog list – but I actually seem to be the only Danish political scientist to have an independent blog. You will find Danish political scientists and economists on the websites of established media like Jyllands-Posten (Peter Nedergaard), Berlingske (Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard) og Politiken (Henrik Christoffersen), but there is no Monkey Cage, Crooked Timber or Economist’s View. Not even a Danish equivalent to the excellent Swedish group blog Ekonomistas.

Equally, I have Swedish colleagues tweeting about politics and academic themes but no Danes. Things are slightly, but only slightly, better on Facebook.

One reason for this sorry state of affairs might be that Danish academics tend to see the internet – and more specifically: blogging – as a mass medium like TV, radio and newspapers: A place where one writes to the general public, not a place where one engages in academic discussions. Traditionally, Danish media have offered good opportunities for academics to publish essays and columns so it would not be surprising if the internet is seen as more of the same. But then again this doesn’t really explain the difference between Denmark and Sweden.

Following this, it will probably not come as a surprise to you that I started blogging when I lived and worked in Sweden. The blog started its life for a relatively simple pragmatic reason: I wanted to share and discuss some rather technical observations about the German federal election in 2005 with a couple of colleagues and a blog appeared to be more convenient than e-mail if I wanted to keep track of my writings. The same goes for the avalanche of posts about Danish and Swedish politics which have followed in the past five and a half years. So if anyone asks, the imagined audience consists of a handful of colleagues (and this is the reason the blog is in English rather than Danish), but obviously anybody passing by is welcome to read and comment. Here, I should perhaps note that the most active commenters – two of my colleagues based in Denmark and Sweden, respectively – tend to reply by sending me … e-mails.

But besides the pragmatic aspect, there are some more general arguments to be made.

First, we live in the age of online but even if universities provide homepages for faculty members (permanent and temporary) and Facebook and LinkedIn provide outlets for online resumés, it may still be a good idea to take control of your online identity. After all, university homepages only provide limited information and are deleted when you leave your position. (I will leave aside the pain inflicted on us by “PU:RE” and similar instruments of administrative torture dreamt up by the bean counters). Similarly, Facebook and LinkedIn are for better or worse walled gardens with powerful, but limited capabilities.

Second, as Anamaria Dutceac Segesten and others have pointed out regular blogging is also an exercise in writing. Similarly, most of my blogposts are inspired by events that I know something about but either don’t understand immediately or want to figure out in greater detail. At best, it can inspire ideas for later research, even if I have tended not to blog about my current research in recent years. I suspect that endless posts on the Danish unemployment insurance during the 1920s might have scared off just about every potential reader.

Okay, it may still be rather pretentious to assume that other people would by definition be interested in one’s scattered thoughts and ideas – and this brings me to the final point:

No, blogging will not make you an overnight celebrity (there is too much noise on the internet these days) or get you on journalists’ speed-dial lists (thank god). My blog has lived and still lives its own quiet life outside of the media highways. But as it is, it has in fact brought me some extra assignments, some of which are documented on my publication list.

Where bureaucratic arrogance meets corporate stupidity is where you will find the Danish Ministry of Education, or “Undervisnings ministeriet” as it wants to be known as. That the minister can’t add two numbers is already known but that the ministry doesn’t care about the basic rules of Danish orthography … well, this is the country where Helge Sander was Minister for Science for nine years, so we should have seen it coming.

Or to put it in Danish

Al tsåb ared etsk alop fatt esso metl ogom åman dele orde neli geso mman harl ystt il

On a more general note, the visual identity of the Danish government on the web and elsewhere remains a complete and utter mess. Obviously the big difference between Denmark and Sweden is that the Danish ministries are not, technically, departments under one Government Office but given that ministries are set up and abolished on a regular basis and parts of portfolios shuffled around, it really would make sense to set up the domain www.regeringen.dk and make the ministries appear as subdomains (e.g. finans.regeringen.dk, udenrigs.regeringen.dk etc).

And finally, I would love to see the Danish government make some kind of systematic policy for publishing white papers, reports parallel to the Swedish SOU and Ds.

Please remind me that I should have an opinion about this rant at some point.

Update: I’ve had an opinion. It’s comment #22 or something.

According to my archive, this blog will be celebrating its fifth year today.¹ It began life because of some discussions with a couple of colleagues (two of whom still follow the blog) about the 2005 German Bundestag election which was followed immediately by the Danish local elections in November. As it is, five years is an eternity on the Web: Facebook was launched in February 2004 and YouTube in February 2005. In November 2005, the launch of Twitter was still half a year away.

So as you can see, we didn’t have too many ways of procrastinating back in the dark ages.

OK, actually another reason for setting up the blog was that I wanted to have an archive of things I would discuss in mails and as I have actually changed my personal mail address and work address since 2005, this has been a reasonable strategy.

Blogging frequency has gone up and down – during 2010 mostly down. There are a number of reasons for this: First, since November 2007 I have done some (paid) work for the Economist Intelligence Unit and this limits my blogging about Danish politics; second, I have deadlines for three major manuscripts in the coming months which obviously diverts my attention and third, there is Twitter which is a wonderful source of profound discussions time sink.

The blog doesn’t get too many comments – but behind the scenes some posts have sparked great discussions. My two regular readers are shy people on the internet even if one of them does in fact have a website of his own, whose address I – for a substantial amount of drinks at his local pub – will not be revealing.

But finally: Should you set up your own website with a personal domain? After all, don’t we have Twitter and Facebook – and LinkedIn for the serious people – these days?

Well, yes and no. First of all, I wouldn’t delude myself into thinking that everything I might say, do or in particular write is endlessly relevant for the internet, but if you are a professional person, then having some kind online resumé and presence which is independent on the whims of whichever service is the craze of the day and the space assigned by your present employer (and remember that you may be changing jobs someday) is in all likelihood a good idea. A personal domain isn’t too expensive (and yes: jacobchristensen.dk was taken so I had to settle for an alternative) and setting up a website reasonably easy.

And no: I cannot and do not give any advice on how to marry a German. Even if this is the most popular search on this site.

1. But not my attempts of blogging: There is a predecessor still out there! [↩]

Denna bloggpost har skrivits som svar på Det flerspråkiga bloggandets dag, ett initiativ från Europakommissionens kontor i Storbritannien.

Som läsaren sannolikt har bemärkt är detta vanligtvis en blogg skriven av en dansk pÃ¥ engelska. Detta är nÃ¥got motsägelsefullt dÃ¥ jag generellt är rätt sÃ¥ kritisk mot tendensen till att likställa “internationell” med “engelska”, en tendens som har ledd till att sÃ¥ gott som alla andra sprÃ¥k än engelskan hÃ¥ller pÃ¥ att försvinna helt frÃ¥n det danska utbildningssystemet – franskan, tysken, ja även svenskan hÃ¥ller pÃ¥ att gÃ¥ samma öde som dodon till mötes. När skandinaver träffas nuförtiden, brukar de prata med varandra pÃ¥ engelska även om de nationella sprÃ¥ken knappast avviker mer frÃ¥n varandra än dialekterna inom varje land (Om man inte tror mig, försök dÃ¥ att lyssna till en svensk som prata skÃ¥nska eller en nordman som talar dialekten frÃ¥n trakterna kring Bergen).

Det finns mÃ¥nga orsaker till att detta är en olycklig tendens. Jag har i och för sig inga problem med att tala (och skriva) pÃ¥ engelska – förutom den mindre komplikationen som bestÃ¥r i att jag förlorar mellan 30 och 50 procent av min uttrycksförmÃ¥ga och förstÃ¥else av vad jag lyssnar pÃ¥ eller läser, ett faktum som i allmänhet fullkomligt överses av de politiker och byrÃ¥krater som aktivt understöder bruken av engelska i den högre utbildningen. Domänförlusten inom högre utbildning och forskning är ett allvarligt problem men politisk överskuggas det helt av besattheten av engelskan som Det Internationella SprÃ¥ket. Märkvärdigt nog har det multikulturella Sverige genomfört lagstiftning som skall stödja svenskans och en rad minoritetssprÃ¥ks status medan politikerna i nationalistiska Danmark antigen är kallsinniga eller i praktiken stöder ersättningen av danskan med engelska.

Men det finns mer att beakta. Språk är inte bara instrumentella. Att lära sig ett annat språk betyder också att man lär sig om kulturen eller kulturerna i det land eller de länder där det används. Om man till exempel inte kan tala eller förstå tyska, finns det ganska mycket om Tyskland man går miste om. Det gäller inte bara Goethe och andra döda gubbar utan också varför ens affärsförbindelser uppträder som de gör. Och varför man råkade trampa i klaveret under det mötet.

Och för övrigt: Jag har aldrig formellt lärt mig att tala eller skriva svenska, men tillbaka i 1970-talet råkade jag se en del svensk tv liksom jag hade flera svenska lärare när jag läste på universitetet. Och sen bodde och arbetade jag förstås hinsidan från 1999 till 2008.

Oh, you want a translation? Here goes:

This blog post was written as a response to the Day of Multilingual Blogging, an initiative from the European Commission Representation in the UK.

As you have probably noted, this is (usually) a blog written by a Dane in English. This is slightly ironic as I am rather sceptical of the trend to equate “international” with “English”, something which has led to almost any other language than English to disappear in the Danish educational system – French, German, even Swedish are going the way of the Dodo. When Scandinavians meet these days, they tend to speak English even though the national languages hardly differ more than the dialects within each country. (If you don’t believe me, try listening to a Swede speaking SkÃ¥nska or, even better, a Norwegian speaking the dialect from the Bergen area).

There are many reasons why this is a deeply troubling development. I have no problems with speaking (and writing) in English as such – except for the minor issue that I lose some 30-50% of the information that I can convey and understand in my native Danish, a fact which is generally lost on the politicians and bureaucrats who promote the use of English in higher education. Domain loss in higher education and research is a serious issue but it is eclipsed by the obsession with English as The International Language. Curiously, multiethnic Sweden has introduced legislation regulating the status of Swedish (and a number of minority languages) while politicians in nationalist Denmark are complacent or in practice actively support the replacement of Danish with English.

But there is more to consider. Languages are not purely instrumental: Learning to use another language also means learning about the cultures of country/ies where it is spoken. If you can’t read or speak German, there are a lot of things about Germany that you will completely miss. We are not just speaking Goethe and other dead men here, but things like the context of political and social debates. Or for that matter why your business partners behave the way they do. And why you put your foot in your mouth during that meeting.

And by the way: I have never learned to speak, read or write Swedish in any formalised way. I just happened to watch some Swedish tv back in the 1970s just as I had a number of Swedish teachers when I went to university. And then I lived and worked on the other side between 1999 and 2008.

… except, for a totally different reason …

Bummer.

Folketinget, the Danish parliament is in summer recess. And boy is it in summer recess: The homepage has been down for more than a day and nobody noticed. Except for a couple of geeks haunting Twitter.

Did you know that this slick WordPress operated blog had a predecessor?

No?

Actually, back in 2004 Apple’s .mac service threw in a blogging application called iBlog for good measure and for whatever reason I decided to give it a try. The results – in Danish – are here.

Some posts made it to this blog, so the first actual post on what was then blog.jacobchristensen.name was this one and things only really started going with the 2005 local elections.