Most people still consider me crazy or irresponsible for having “forced” my wife and infant son to live for three and a half years with me in an East Harlem tenement. They often joke that my research sites are a product of a risk-craver’s character flaw. In short, one is made to feel bizarre, stupid, loony, and perhaps even unethical - or at least irresponsible - when one insists on taking the inner city seriously enough to conduct participant-observation in it. It becomes worse if one engages the neighborhood respectfully enough to actually enjoy and learn from living and studying on the streets.

First of all, the blog itself paves the way for a different relationship with the reader than anthropologists have been used to. Readers can—and are expected—to reply, ask questions, and begin debates. The participatory process is a key component of blogs. Multimedia therefore questions the very vertical relation that seems to be common in academia. As Chrisomalis writes, academic blogs can be seen as a “modern, egalitarian equivalent of literary salons- the sort of place where like-minded (and not-so-like minded) people, regardless of status or profession, can talk about ideas informally and get to meet one another.