Final Blog Paper

8/3/2019 Final Blog Paper

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/final-blog-paper 1/14

Juneman

Samantha

Juneman

12/1/11

Hanson Hosein

Dr. Malcolm Parks

Final Blog Paper

Living in an urban neighborhood with six other college studentswas not an easy situation to be in and stay oblivious to what washappening in the dumpsters right outside of my apartment. Originally Ionce thought that the term “Dumpster Diving” was limited to finding

furniture or house accessories in dumpsters next to student housing;pertaining to only junk most of the time. I had no idea that there was asubculture, right here in my own neighborhood, of groups of “Divers”. These Divers were collecting and consuming food products from thetrash of local businesses in the University District of Seattle. Thissurprised me, because taking junk from the dumpster is one thing, buttaking food (and eating it too) brought it to a whole other level of discomfort.

The first time I ever went diving was with my new roommateGiulia. She had been living and diving in the University District for

three years now. I was new to both, and was shown the ropes by newroommate soon enough. A couple of times she had mentioned that shewas going diving and would be bringing back some bread for ourhouse. I never really thought too much of it until the night she wokeour house up and told us we were all going diving together atmidnight. I was completely up for the adventure, but wasn’t exactlysure how I felt about consuming food from the trash. I just couldn’timagine the items she claimed to find on her normal route being in anykind of condition I would be comfortable with.

After our adventure, the twenty-pound brick of chocolate, andthe twelve loaves of bread we found, my perspective was drasticallyaltered. To my surprise, we found dumpster after dumpster full of perfectly good and clean food being disposed by businesses for variousreasons. Those reasons we’re almost never because the food wasinedible. Not only did I discover this was happening, but I noticed thatmany people in the area were aware of this and took advantage.

After that experience, I was telling everyone about how I wentdiving and found all of this great stuff. Even though I was so excited

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about this, most of the reactions I got were disgusted and worried. Irealized that I had previously reacted the same way to my roommateand suddenly felt the urge to make people aware of the reality of thesituation. It’s not that I wanted to convert people into becoming divers.I wanted them to become aware of the waste that was happening in

their own neighborhood, and that it was possible to personally reap thebenefits of it.

The blog “Skipping and Diving” was created to start buildingawareness of the Dumpster Diving culture in my neighborhood. I admitthat I wanted more people to become aware of this activity so that Iwouldn’t encounter so many adverse reactions when talking about myown experiences. The initial Action Idea for “Skipping and Diving” wasto document my exploration through the diving culture and provideevidence to change behavior and attitude within my community.However, I later discovered that the scope of my intentions was too

broad to accomplish in the short time I had for creating the blog andwould not be able to make it successful in 7 weeks. I then decided thatthe goal of this blog would not be to inspire change in attitude1 andconvert negative impressions into positive ones. I realized that evenafter showing my audience evidence that changed my ownperspective, it would not necessarily change theirs too. Alongside that,I also realized that changing my audience’s behaviors1 (in terms of food consumption and waste) would not successfully be the goal of theblog either. Although inspiring behavioral change would be a greatoutcome of the effort being put into “Skipping and Diving”, it would notbe something I would measure success by. Knowing that readers

“assume that these same stories might exist not ‘simply’ to report onthat condition, but as a catalyst for changing it,”2 I deducted that thebehavioral change would probably result from the readers ownimpressions, however the blog was not initially going to use it’scontent to help readers change their behavioral patterns. Afterredefining the action idea and narrowing it down to the goal of simplycreating awareness, it was important to constantly look back toprevious action ideas. The contrast between the first action idea and

1. Parks, M. (2011) Persuasion and Influence [Power Point Slides]retrieved from

https://uw.instructure.com/courses/150377/files#EVOLUTION%20AND%20TRENDS%20IN%20DIGITAL%20MEDIA%2FWeek%205%20Slides%2FCom%20546%20-%20Parks%20-%20Class%205%20Fall%202011.ppt

2. Selbin, E. (2010). Revolution, Rebellion, Resistance: The Power of Story. London, UK: Zed Books. Pg 26, Chp 2.

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the last revision of it was helpful in seeing what I didn’t have time toaccomplish, and what I did have time to accomplish. The similarities inthose actions statements were helpful to inspire ideas for the contentof the blog. Things I knew I wanted to explore, regardless of the goal,were evident in both action ideas and kept me fueled for content.

The ultimate question is, “How can you measure the success of your blog?” After two months of blogging, experimenting withengagement, and thinking carefully about my audience members, theblog’s success can be based off of these things:

1. Audience members who took the time to express theirimpressions of the subject (whether or not those impressionswere different from their views before).

2. Audience members who participated in contemplating thesubject (acknowledged they were thinking about their opinionon the subject matter-did not necessarily state this in writing)

3. Audience members who participated in sharing theinformation and spread awareness to their own networks.

4. Audience members acquired outside of the Internet (became

aware of the blog through physical meetings and word of mouth)

These examples of success can be analyzed by comments(responses) to the “Skipping and Diving” word press blog3 ,“Likes” onthe word press blog, Facebook responses to “Skipping and Diving”posts4 Facebook shares of blog content, Facebook impressions, Pollresults, physical audience member meetings, and emails. All of thissuccessful evidence illustrates the effectiveness of the blog’smultifaceted strategy. Below, I will dissect the each example of effectiveness along with the strategy that accompanied it.

As the main goal of “Skipping and Diving” is awareness of the

3 Juneman, S (2011) Skipping and Diving [Word Press Blog], Retrievedfrom http://skippinganddiving.wordpress.com/

4 Juneman, S (2011) Skipping and Diving [Face Book Fan Page],Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/pages/Skipping-and-Diving/211454002255994

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subject, one of best examples of success would be of those audiencemembers who have put forth the effort to express their opinion on thesubject through any of the blog’s mediums (This includes Word Press,Facebook, Posterous, Twitter, and Tumblr). Although many of theblog’s audience members expressed their opinions to be that of a

changed perspective, not all were convinced by the content’s evidenceand expressed that their opinion did not waiver from their thoughts onthe subject before they had read the blog. If providing convincingevidence were a strategy for changing a reader’s attitude, having proof of a reader’s unchanged perspective would be proof of failure.However, these readers whose attitudes remained the same, were nota lost cause. Their awareness of the subject was in fact heightenedafter being exposed to the content of the blog. For a reader to decidethat their opinion remains the same on the matter, they would have atleast looked at the evidence presented by the blog. Looking at theevidence can make a reader aware of the issue, but it will not

necessarily define their attitude about it. Therefore we can concludethat those audience members who proclaimed their unchangedattitudes about dumpster diving had become aware of the subject; atleast enough to bother to share their opinion on the matter.

The strategy in getting readers to respond to the blog’s contentwas to share interesting and eye opening evidence into the food wastematter in our neighborhood. The very first post published on “Skippingand Diving” was a first hand account of my first diving experience. Inthe post I included pictures and descriptions of the incredible amountand quality of food we found that night. Among the things we found (toquote the blog post) were “8 loafs of bread that were perfectly good”

and “a 20lb brick of solid baking chocolate”5

.

5 Juneman, S (2011) “My First Dumpster Diving Experience”, Skippingand Diving [Word Press Blog Post], Retrieved fromhttp://skippinganddiving.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/my-first-dumpster-diving-experience/

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“ A clip from the post “My First Dumpster Diving Experience” ( http://skippinganddiving.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/my-first-dumpster-

diving-experience/ ) This snippet illustrates the evidence of a monumentalchocolate find with an interesting description and an entertaining picture”

To have readers become aware of the food being wasted in theUniversity district of Seattle, the strategy was to share compellingevidence. This strategy was incredibly effective in getting the readersto share their reactions with others showing their newfound awareness

of the subject. Below is a comment found in the post mentionedabove5, which illustrates their reaction to my first diving experience.

““ A clip from the post “My First Dumpster Diving Experience” ( http://skippinganddiving.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/my-first-dumpster-diving-experience/ ). This snippet illustrates a reader’s impression on the

compelling evidence being presented in this blog post.”

The reader, Jose Mendoza, makes an effort to express hisimpressions on the act of dumpster diving; making the assumption that

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college students are mainly participating in the act. He also mentionsthat he is uncertain of the safety of the act and the location to whichmy team and I were diving. This concern of his wouldn’t have arisenunless he was presented with a narrative full of compelling details intothe subject of dumpster diving. The reader also mentions his

impression on how much food is being wasted and remarks on aparticular piece of evidence. This particular post was most effective insharing interesting evidence; at least enough to spark a conversation. Just this post, with 5 comments, 122 views, and 149 Facebookimpressions, created awareness in over 200 readers.

Finding readers who were becoming aware of the subject wasnot as simple as looking at the comments section of the blog. Therewere other readers who were reading, acknowledging they werereading, but did not necessarily publish their thoughts about it.Measuring the extent of their awareness is not possible through this

analysis, but we can still count their acknowledgement as some formof awareness, no matter how big. One post in particular that lookeddeeper into the food waste of one particular chain grocery store,attracted readers unattached to my personal network. Althoughreadership numbers are rather high for “Skipping and Diving”, most of those readers are within my personal social network. However, withthis post, the blog attracted readers from all over the place who werenot connected to me personally. The strategy in attracting thesepeople was to dive deeper into a specified issue, and attract thosereaders who are not necessarily interested in dumpster diving, but areinterested in the grocery chain we investigated. Along side this effort,

it was important to categorize and tag the post with key words relatingto the specialized topic, and then reach out to those communitymembers who were interested in the controversy of the specificgrocery store chain. The results of this strategy were enormous andnew readers were acquired like “Belchdini” from Norfolk, VA.

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“ A clip from the post “Trader Joes’ Dumpster Diving and Halloween Cookies” ( http://skippinganddiving.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/trader-joes-dumpster-

diving-and-halloween-cookies/ ). This snippet illustrates a new reader acquired outside of my own social network that acknowledged his presence

in the discussion without stating his opinion on the matter.

These readers acknowledge their awareness by clicking the“Like” button on the Word Press post or clicking the “Like” button onthe Facebook post. The strategy in reaching out to other nichecommunities proved effective by discussing topics they were alsointerested in. Making the post easily findable to those readers was thekey to getting them to acknowledge their presence in the discussion,whether or not their opinion on the matter was expressed.

Awareness was also created by those readers who felt compelledto share the information of “Skipping and Diving” to their own personalnetworks. This is among one of the most effective strategies to gainawareness in networks outside of your own. Connecting certain peopleto “Skipping and Diving”, who I knew as effective media sharers, wasthe key to this strategy. I selectively spoke with people who wereusually willing to share good information with their audiences, whichalmost always read their content. These specific audience membersreached out to their own social networks and acquired new membersfrom other states and interests creating another large leap inawareness. Here are two examples of audience members with anevidently large “Eigenvector Centrality”6, meaning they are not only

6 1. Parks, M (2011) Measuring Centrality [Power Point Slides]. Sourcedfrom https://uw.instructure.com/courses/150377/files#EVOLUTION%20AND%20TRENDS%20IN%20DIGITAL%20MEDIA%2FWeek%202%20Slides%2FCom%20546%20-%20Parks%20-%20Class%202%20Fall%202011.ppt

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connected to a lot of people, but are connected to people who know alot of people. The first example is an undergraduate composition majorin California who shares his humorous insight into my project to hisown social network.

“ An audience member’s Facebook share of the “Skipping and Diving” blog, resulting in a spike of almost 100 new views of the post that day”

The second example of my networking strategy was a fellowblogger who is well connected in the Seattle area (an advantage Icould not provide on my own). She shared the “Skipping and Diving”blog with her well-connected network and spread awareness to anumber of new readers.

“ An audience member’s Facebook share of the “Skipping and Diving” blog,resulting in a spike of almost 75 new views of the post that day”

An interesting result of having the second media maker share myblog with her network, was that I ended up meeting people out inSeattle who knew me from my blog that this reader had shared withthem. Not only did this bring up the opportunity to speak with themface-to-face about the subject, but it also increased my chances in

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the blog was able to present a story and pictures about meeting fellowdivers in one of the most popular diving spots in the neighborhood. This post was particularly effective because it was able to show thecommunity an example of what else is happening in theirneighborhood. Alongside with giving readers new faces to look at, the

post displayed evidence of our findings which stirred a large amount of discussion over the types of things being thrown away.

“ A clip from the post “Trader Joes’ Dumpster Diving and Halloween Cookies” ( http://skippinganddiving.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/trader-joes-dumpster-diving-and-halloween-cookies/ ). This snippet illustrates the blog’s strategy indisplaying real people who are part of the dumpster diving community. It also

displays evidence of our findings.”

Alongside meeting people in action, “Skipping and Diving”hosted a training session for those readers who wanted to give diving atry after seeing interesting evidence on the blog. Those readers weretaken to three popular spots that have been already featured in theblog. During the training session, readers were given safety tips,shown where to go, and what to get. These training sessions werehosted for those who were interested in diving to learn more about thesubject past the written information listed on the blog. The strategy ineducating these readers outside of the blog was to give them practicalknowledge so that they might spread awareness themselves. Giving

the readers their own experience to share with a digital communityonly created more discussion and awareness. Not only was thiseffective in creating more discussion on the topic but the group of readers was able to meet divers of the community in action.

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“ A clip from the post “Dumpster Virgins” ( http://skippinganddiving.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/dumpster-virgins/ ) This picture shows the “Skipping and Diving” readers during a training session

along with friends they made while diving at “Theo’s Chocolate Factory”

Bringing physical community members together with digital oneswas a great strategy to strengthen readership, involvement, anddiscussion. When audience members were given insight into the

specific details of diving, they were able to connect with the peoplethey saw on the blog, understand the appeal, and become more awareof every aspect of the action (both danger and appeal).

During my creation process, I was very fortunate to have found anumber of effective strategies that worked well for my blog. Howeversuccessful they may have been, I feel that those strategies have morepotential than what was gained from them. Converting physicalcommunity members into digital ones was a great way to gain morereaders and spread awareness to a new network within thecommunity. The place where this strategy fell short was the follow up.After meeting these people, there was no way to involve them in the

process later on in the blog. It would have been more effective to plansomething like a testimonial section where these people could sharetheir stories and answer questions from the readers. Anything to keepthem involved in the blog past the initial meeting would have beenmore beneficial to maintain discussion and viewership. Also takingadvantage of those readers, that shared the blog’s content with theirnetwork, would have been more effective as well. After their firstshare, it would have been a great idea to keep those key people more

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involved with the blog, that way their network would come across“Skipping and Diving” content more frequently and would be moreinclined to get involved.

In the short time I had to develop the blog, there were so manyideas that were not able to come to fruition. Continuing the blog with a

longer timeline will help me develop these strategies, mentionedearlier, a lot more thoroughly. If more time and resources werepermitted, I would have spent more time investigating food waste inthe neighborhood. In the future, I would like to conduct interviews withstore managers in the area discussing food waste and their store’sdonation policies. Involving the local businesses in the awarenesswould be rather effective. Discussion would start in their business andresonate through their customers and into the neighborhood. In thefuture I would also like to spend more time getting involved with thedigital communities of dumpster divers in other areas as well. Gettinginvolved with knowledgeable community members will allow me to

post more original information for readers to digest.Overall, creating awareness is not possible without discussion.

The more often people are talking about the subject, the more they arebecoming knowledgeable of it and are sharing that information. All of the effective strategies of this blog were successful because of thisdiscussion element. Without having people share their thoughts, telltheir friends about the blog, or meeting people physically, thereadership of this blog would be very low. Spreading awareness to theneighborhood is done to benefit those individuals. If those individualsweren’t being reached, than ultimately the blog would be unsuccessful.However, due to these engagement rich strategies, many of the

neighborhood’s community members have become aware andhopefully even more will join the discussion in the future.

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Citations

1. Parks, M (2011) Persuasion and Influence [Power Point Slides].Retrieved fromhttps://uw.instructure.com/courses/150377/files#EVOLUTION%20AND%20TRENDS%20IN%20DIGITAL%20MEDIA%2FWeek%205%20Slides%2FCom%20546%20-%20Parks%20-%20Class%205%20Fall%202011.ppt

2. Parks, M (2011) Measuring Centrality [Power Point Slides].Sourced fromhttps://uw.instructure.com/courses/150377/files#EVOLUTION%20AND%20TRENDS%20IN%20DIGITAL%20MEDIA%2FWeek%202%20Slides%2FCom%20546%20-%20Parks%20-%20Class%202%20Fall%202011.ppt

3. Parks, M. (2011) A Word About “Word of Mouth” [Power PointSlide] Retrieved fromhttps://uw.instructure.com/courses/150377/files#EVOLUTION

%20AND%20TRENDS%20IN%20DIGITAL%20MEDIA%2FWeek%203%20Slides%2FCom%20546%20-%20Parks%20-%20Class%203%20Fall%202011.ppt

4. Kozinets, R., Valck, K., Wojnicki, A., Wilner, S. (2010) “NetworkedNarratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in OnlineCommunities”. Journal of Marketing, Vol. 74 (March 2010) pg 71-89

5. Selbin, E. (2010). Revolution, Rebellion, Resistance: The Power of

Story. London, UK: Zed Books. Pg 26, Chp 2.

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