Blog Analysis

Listening (Reading) Blog Analysis                Teresa Diebold                       January 15, 2020

Jeff Atwood’s blog post, “Because Reading is Fundamental” is an informative discussion of how we interact with content presented to us online. Atwood demonstrates his thesis, is that the best conversation is very little to do with how much people are talking and that the value of conversation depends on the quantity of listening. He supports his thesis with citing two different studies as well as solutions on how to correct poor listening and improve the value of conversation. 

The beginning of the discussion, “Because Reading is Fundamental” Jeff has a photo with a user’s name, profession, join date, location and number of posts. Under the photo he asks the question: “What message does this send?”. This draws the audience in because it doesn’t have enough information to explain why it is so important, so it leads the reader into investigating further, reading forward into his blog post. The main idea’s foundation is value of the numbers an account holds to create value, and it is the readers job to be wise on who they support and to research/ know what they are adding numbers too. What the object of the discussion is ultimately that listening(reading) the whole article or story is far more important than commenting and forming an opinion prematurely.

Coding Horror seems to direct its content to a young to mature adult demographic. The content in the post “Because Reading is Fundamental” directs its message to an audience that is familiar with having an online presence. In terms of occupation, the audience is most likely educated or established in a communication field of study as the blog has a significant research, higher vocabulary and advanced topics of discussion based around the topics of communication and the outcomes of communication on an online platform. 

Jeff uses research from The Ars Banana Experiment and The Slate Experiment. Both experiments exhibit proves his thesis that listening(reading) online has become diluted and therefor needs to be corrected. In The Ars Banana Experiment, it took 93 commenters until finally one figured out the secret at the end of the article, and commented banana.  As concluded, by the first banana commenter, 93^rd in total comments, roughly 90% of readers read the title before deciding on their opinion and how they support the given “evidence” by commenting on the story, adding their support of the mock story and moving it onto other non-suspecting viewers to create more numbers and opinions. Jeff then reflects on the outcomes of these experiments and forms four solutions to improve listening to add the value back into conversation, that can be applied to any platform.

1.     Remove interruptions to reading, primarily pagination.

2.     Measure read times and display them.

3.     Give rewards for reading.

4.     Update in real time.

By Jeff’s solutions, conversation on any platform can be corrected and more value can be added to the outcome. With these solutions, by incentivising listening(reading), audiences will be able to join in a greater dialogue and be exposed to more conversation and lessen the need for producing comments to create a better online presence. Always read the whole story before forming an opinion or adding support to an account, person or story.