Blog Analysis
Jon Glass
January 9, 2019
Jeff Attwood’s blog post titled “Because Reading is
Fundamental” main idea is to determine whether a post counter attached to
someone’s username on a website incites healthy conversation, or does it hinder
the conversation.
His posts desired audience appears to gear towards
content creators in the online space wanting to increase engagement on their
own websites and are most likely young adults with some post secondary
education. This is indicated by the
metrics used, such as the post counter and his propositioned read timer.
Furthermore, the research Attwood performed to find the different experiments
highlighted are geared towards content creators and how to increase engagement.
The blog does appear to be successful in accomplishing
what the blog is set out to do. It immediately draws the reader in with a large
image showcasing something familiar to many content creators.
He
introduces the piece almost immediately with a question, “what message does
this send?” This question asks the reader to think immediately, which
encourages the reader to continue reading what else the post has to say to
hopefully answer the question asked initially.
Attwood
is trying to prove that much discussion on the internet is usually uninformed,
because the commenters are not reading the post to add value to the discussion.
As such, Attwood has gathered several studies to prove his theory as well as
use the studies to reinforce his ideas of how to improve the audience’s
engagement with the subject matter. These studies are called the Ars Banana
Experiment and the Slate Experiment.
The
Ars Banana experiment enforces Attwood’s argument by showing how including a
hidden message in the text to engage with the reader will prove who did and did
not read the article, and as such increase the value of those opinions in the
discussion. The Slate Experiment reinforces his argument by collecting data to
see how any visitors to a site read the content listed, which works out to be
about fifty percent of visitors.
Attwood
proposes four ideas on how to overcome the lack of reading from an audience:
1. Remove
interruptions to reading, primarily pagination.
2. Measure
read times and display them.
3. Give
rewards for reading.
4. Update
in real time.
These
ideas have merit, however what is lacking is any substantial evidence that
these ideas do increase engagement as the studies provided earlier in the post
are only loosely related to his overall conclusion of how to increase
engagement.
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