Who is Lincoln Dalhberg? #edcmooc

Who is Lincoln Dahlberg?

This might be a question being asked by Wiley (publishers) content editors as a potential 20,000 Coursarians access his article (Dahlberg 2004) sending him to the top of the most downloaded articles in their data verse. Of course there are things about this article that make it attractive to link to:

1. It is published as Open Access so there are no barriers to anyone accessing it if they know it is there. 20K Courserians do of course. 
2. It is a review, synthesising previous research in a clear and simple structure with an integrative approach to a diverse number of theories, writers and models. Always handy to have one of those.
3. It is a methodological paper, which tend to have longer life spans than other types of articles as methodology is not as a rule a popular subject for articles. More often it is covered in depth in books.

These combine to make it a good choice for the the EDC MOOC. They are not the first to notice its good and useful qualities, it has been cited according to Google Scholar 45  times, which is high even by the inflated standards of Google. In any altmetric measure which includes the number of references in social media and downloads, Lincoln Dahlberg is going to notice an exponential increase in his profile. Perhaps, unless he reads this blog, with no obvious cause for him, but pleasing none the less.

What do we learn? Free is not free of value to everyone. For those included in the MOOC verse it can raise profiles and enhance reputations by delivering or directing massive volumes of readers to a single place or artefact. In a word of automated measures, rankings and algorithms the MOOC has collective power and the MOOC creators the power to add value to the free to access by shining the spotlight on it or perhaps by directing their tidal wave of click through's at a specific object. Whichever you prefer. 

For the record, I found it informative, well written and helpful. 

Reference

Dahlberg, L. (2004), Internet Research Tracings: Towards Non-Reductionist Methodology. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 9: 00. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2004.tb00289.x [Accessed 10 Accessed].