Blog Analysis: Richness of Conversation Online: The Factors

In his blog post, Because Reading is Fundamental, Jeff Attwood argues that the quality of online conversation goes down significantly because people are not incentivized to read. They are instead incentivized to comment and contribute to the conversation bellow the article, even if they have not read the entire article and do not know what they are talking about.

The piece draws you in with the picture of the name bar at the top, with the question “what message does this send?” below the screenshot. This is an effective way to draw the reader in because it is vague, yet intriguing, and entices them to read further.

Overall, the blog is very effective in conveying its message. The reader feels engaged throughout, and the hook is strong. By using other sources such as The Ars Banana Experiment, and The Slate Experiment Attwood makes his argument all the more compelling. The fact that he uses outside sources coupled with the fact that the language is elevated suggests that this post, and the blog at large is intended for an educated audience, possibly in the communications or psychology fields. It is also meant for a younger audience with a significant online presence, because of the content of what it is talking about. The fact that it is posted on a blog also indicates that it is for a younger audience maybe late high school age to 40- or 50-year old’s with a focus on people in their 20’s and 30’s.

The research he uses compliments his points well and further proves his thesis that the best and most productive conversations have very little to do with the amount that people are talking and everything to do with how well people are listening, or in this case reading. The fact that in the Ars experiment, the 93d comment was the first to comment “bananas” shows how chronic this problem really is. Over 90% of people didn’t read to the 7^th paragraph of the article.

The suggestions made by Attwood are to remove interruptions from reading, primarily pagination, measure read times and display them, give rewards for reading and lastly, update in real-time. All of these are good techniques for keeping the reading problem in check. The internet and social media need to shift their focus from a comment incentivized system to a reading incentivized system.