At Many-to-Many, Liz Lawley points to an online journal, Into the Blogosphere, with a wealth of academic articles on weblogs and the nature of the blogging community.

Articles include:

• Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project
• Culture Clash: Journalism and the Communal Ethos of the Blogosphere
• Weblogs and the Public Sphere

And, BTW, the University of Minnesota offers weblogs to any faculty, staff, or student who wants one through UThink, University of Minnesota libraries project:

UThink is available to the faculty, staff, and students of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and is intended to support teaching and learning, scholarly communication, and individual expression for the U of M community.