Several days ago, I finished a final draft of an essay entitled “Networked Politics: Deliberation, Mobilization and Everything In-Between” to be published as a chapter in the Networked Publics book edited by Kazys Varnelis. The first draft was written with my co-author, Mark Kann, a senior poli-sci professor at USC. Now, after I rewrote it, it goes to the editor and we’ll see whether it needs some further revisions or not. Academic publishing, especially in North American setting, is a meticulous and very impractical business. It pursues quality to the max — not only quality of substance (research) but also of writing/style/grammar. It needs a year or more just to get one small piece to be published. Let alone the book. Every single piece goes through blind pe-er reviews, sometimes double, and it goes back and forth to you and the editor until everybody’s satisfied! Well, what can I do? I chose to be a scholar, nobody forced me to do this so I should follow the rules and so far I don’t get real troubles (yet) in publishing. And when I don’t want to conform with traditions and rules, I’ll just ramble freely in this blog, hehe.
So, it was a big relief that I finally finished. It’s a long essay and while being empirical, it’s a conceptual writing. Since it may put you to sleep easily, if I copy the whole essay, here I copy one section of it. It represents perhaps only 15% of the whole essay.
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