I recently interviewed Daniel Little, author of Understanding Society, as part of the research feeding into Social Media for Academics. Here are some extracts from an extremely thought provoking conversation:
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Mark Carrigan 
8 responses to “Treating ideas with seriousness: @DLittle30 on social media and scholarship”
Could you please include transcripts of these for people who need them? Thanks!
Sorry I have no funding for these. If I had the resources to produce transcripts then I would.
Not sure if I understand. The only resource needed to produce a transcript is a bit of time. I see 7 minutes of content here, probably about an hour worth of work. It wouldn’t even have to be done by yourself, as there are communities willing to pool their time together to produce transcripts for things that are worth it, on a volunteering basis. If there is some other barrier I am not thinking of please do let me know, as I always try to encourage people to produce transcripts/subtitles for their content and would like to know how to make sure I do this efficiently.
Having spent many hundreds of hours in the past transcribing (non-podcast) interviews, my willingness to do any more is pretty much non-existent. If I felt unable to post audio online without transcribing it then I just wouldn’t post any audio online because an occasional hobby would have become a vast, onerous and unenjoyable undertaking which I wouldn’t have the time or energy for. When I have resources to produce podcasts in an official capacity then I’ll try and ensure they’re all transcribed but, as I hobby, I just don’t see how it’s viable. I don’t mean this in a petulant way, I just mean it’s not something I would ever choose to do or derive satisfaction from because it would involve vast amounts of an activity that I can’t stand. I completely accept there’s a systemic issue here which needs to be addressed as podcasts become more popular but I just don’t think it’s viable to try and resolve this by creating an expectation that individual hobbyist podcasters will self-transcribe everything they publish. Given that I assume your interest is in the broader issue here rather than the particular podcast on the page, I’d be really interested to hear what you think. These micro-podcasts are from a research interview conducted for a book about how academics use social media and I want to tackle this issue properly in the book.
Mind you, I didn’t just scour the Internet looking for people to suggest to that they should put transcriptions/subtitles on what they share. I actually do follow your blog and am interested in the content of the podcast, which is precisely why I think it should be made accessible to all.
I understand disliking transcribing as an activity, I really do. I have spent hundred of hours transcribing myself. However, I do think it is our responsibility to make an active choice to make our content accessible, no matter how arduous or annoying it can be. To me it is almost a matter of decency, if I may put it that way. Pretty sure any annoyance from having to transcribe is a lot less powerful than the annoyance of disabled academics who meet barriers in their work constantly, for lack of accessibility.
In my ideal world, yes, there would be an expectation of transcribing anything published by podcasters. As mentioned previously though, I don’t believe this is necessarily something you have to undertake yourself, on your own. There are people who ask around and find people willing to spend some time transcribing and sharing the load. After all, even TED a talks are subtitled and translated by volunteers!
Could we move to e-mail? I’d really like to discuss further if that’s ok with you & I always feel strangely inhibited having extended conversations in comments boxes.
Sure, you can use the email address I put in the “email” box of the comment.
thanks, will e-mail next week