To help you move on on your reading, I am posting here the guidelines for your next two reports.
Doyle et al. 2012, is a practical paper, especially for those working in the Wine Industry. It can also be used in other areas, but it's important to understand how we know what we know, therefore, in your report, pay attention to the methodology used and the way data was analysed.
What
advantages provide a content analysis of blogs? What are the limitations?
Continuing
with our reflection on how research methods impact what we can learn in a
research study, how do you see content analysis compared with an ethnographic study?
This study
looked at the Wine Industry, as much as possible in your analysis of this paper
see how you can translate Doyle et al. 2012 findings to your own organization.
- Have you study trust in this detail?
- Why Trust is such an important concept for Blogs and other social networking sites?
- Look at Figure 1. What are the dimensions that Doyle et al. include in their model that you find more important?
- If you are ‘the provider of information’ how do you see yourself acting on these dimensions in such a way to signal them in your blog?
Similarly, here are some posts of some of the reports you sent me. Can you identify your own voice?
ReplyDeleteJLGG's excerpts:
ReplyDeleteThe content analysis we can provide a variety of information that becomes knowledge when it is subject to analysis and can help us to give credibility to the bloggers and go increasing their reliability and consider your opinion or experience on a certain topic.
With billions of daily consumer conversations taking place across the open social media universe, millions of which are specifically focused on brands, many leading corporations are not just taking notice of the opportunity to listen and understand their consumers and markets like never before, but strategically leveraging this wealth of consumer intelligence to drive their marketing strategy and product innovation. The impact of this “next generation” market research is spanning the enterprise across marketing organization from consumer insights to competitive intelligence to product development.
Consumers can access product information through more channels and from more sources than ever before. Blogs are a growing channel through which both commercial and non-commercial product experts, “enthusiasts,” and other “infomediaries” communicate unfiltered pre-purchase or post-purchase product information to information-seeking consumers. While the interests and involvement of commercial communicators online is reflective of their financial gain, the increasing reach of non-commercial communicators is particularly noteworthy has recently noted that “little research has thus far emerged as to the extent to which audiences believe what they read in blogs”.
It has long been recognized that “an individual’s acceptance of information and ideas is based in part on ‘who said it’”. Both commercial (marketer-dominated) and non-commercial blog creators must gain the trust of information-seeking consumers in order to secure them as readers and influence consumption decisions. Consumers may be comfortable with the general character of non-commercial information sources but have concerns regarding their ability to make accurate assertions. Consumers have different concerns regarding the self-interest bias of commercial information sources. Indeed, consumers differentially associate commercial and non-commercial information sources with knowledge and reporting biases. Knowledge bias implies an ability deficiency, whereas reporting bias suggests inadequate motivation to make accurate claims. Both compromise information accuracy and reliability assessments. Thus, both commercial and non-commercial bloggers face obstacles in consumer trustworthiness assessments. This study examines the explicit trust-related arguments or cues that commercial and non-commercial product information bloggers use to attempt to overcome these obstacles.
To assess trustworthiness signals in wine blogs, a content analysis of wine blogs was carried out. Content analysis is a well-established technique for objectively, systematically, and quantitatively studying communications content. In total, 175 wine blogs were analyzed over two stages using methodological practices for drawing inferences from unstructured data.
The first stage was designed to initially profile the communication of trustworthiness signals in a sample of 50 wine blogs in order to confirm the workability of the trust cue signaling measurement methodology and to provide an initial test of the dimension-level hypotheses. Stage 2 involved analysis of 125 additional wine blogs to build upon Stage 1 results and test all hypotheses.
JJMH's summary:
ReplyDeleteMy reflections
In my opinion blogs are a useful information source, also I had used them to get information about things that I needed to implement on the place I worked, and sometimes too I needed to find information to solve problems not related with the job. So, I’m much identified with this paper because sometimes the problem is to find a reliable blog to get information.
The central topic at this paper to me is TRUST. The person behind blogs sometimes is an employee from some company with the expertise on the area, this is a big basis to the trust on that blog! But the problem is when posts have a little of publicity for the products and/or services from the company. At this point I don’t know if this person is telling information without the intention to sell me something or if this is really what I need. The step I’m following is investigate a little more, if another bloggers or persons says something similar then I follow the initial suggestion, another case then I try with other options but if these fail then I return to the initial.
In my perspective, if I read blogs from people without an affiliation to a company, then they can offer various options to get the result that I’m searching including alternatives commercials and not commercials. I can see a problem on this way, and this is that sometimes this bloggers are not experts on the theme and in some point they can have wrong information or something like that.
For example, in one occasion I had a trouble with the IAC valve of my car. The mechanic changed and calibrated this valve, but after some days the calibration was lost and the car revolutions become crazy! Then the mechanic did not understand why this was happening and I took my computer to find information about this problem. I found a lot of blogs and forums with a lot of information and I selected the best to me, some people says things like “you can calibrate the valve manually, take a rule and open the valve to an specific height”, but on another blog I found “the valve calibrates electronically, you should not try to calibrate manually because you can damage it and the guarantee can’t cover this!”. Then I read this blog, the blogger was a person with expertise on mechanic and he post the ways to solve the problem. This blogger gain my trust because he explains the things easily, nonprofit and solve questions from his readers.
Another example is when I needed a solution to generate graphics in the program language that I used on my former job. I was searching information on a lot of blogs, the solutions looked effective but the troubles come after, sometimes they proposed tools to use but it did not helped me because the graphic had a watermark with a logo, to remove I needed to purchase a solution but I can’t because the paperwork to get the money is too long and maybe the personal involved on financials don’t approve the spending. Another solutions don’t had the potential to do that I needed, then I found the solution on some blogs that send me to another blogs from the company that sells the program language! On this site I found a lot of information of people working in similar things like me, so I solve this problem with the better solution and free because the tool was part of an update. After me some mates needed some similar and obviously ran to me, I gave them all the documentations and notes that I made and the address from blogs and official sites to get more information.
So, I can understand that some blogs have information valuable, but we must select those with the better information and without the intention to sell something from a company. I’m not telling that this blogs must be ignored, we can use them to learn something or to find a way to follow and maybe have a default solution in case that we don’t find other options.
My conclusion is that we can use blogs and trust on them, but the homework is to find those with reliable information and the possibility to ask questions and after you have a response from the blogger.
JCC's excerpts:
ReplyDeleteIn this part of the document the authors explain that customers search product information from sources they believe will help them to make good decisions, but there is no exact science for this kind of selection. The best solution available for them is the source of trustworthiness. For information providers it’s imperative to determine how customer evaluate those sources, and what they use those evaluations. Out of the internet context we do the same thing, we tend to trust recommendations from friends or relatives, but it’s even better to get recommendations from upright people.
In this new scheme/reality (the internet) we have more information than ever, and it’s quite difficult to determine which recommendation or blog is more reliable, because there is a lot of information. This is when the community’s knowledge comes in our help. When a person or an organization profit or nonprofit has a lot of “likes” or followers we get a good indication that it is a good source. But this level of confidence doesn’t come without good practices, the most important one: “always say the truth”. The success in life is not a result, is an endless process that has to be taken care of.
Another part that really like about this section is the explanation of the methodology, how the authors depart from the main division of categories/sources (commercial and nonprofit). Without this methodology is very difficult to study this case in particular. I also enjoy the explanation of why the authors selected the wine industry as the case of study. It’s well noticed that there are some expensive wines and a bad decision when we buy wines can produce uncomfortable results, even if the wine is high quality it could be not of the buyer’s taste. I never considered the social part as important, but it’s true, what we do is what we are, what we drink is also a good indicator of what we are as individuals.
For me this article can apply to a great spectrum of company’s types, we just need to modify some parts of the methodology, even though most of it is basically standard. To be sincere, prior reading this article, I didn’t see the blogs as a great tool. However I did see Micro blogging as a great tool for commercial and social purposes, but now I get that a more dedicated blog for a certain topic with no size limits is a great tool as well.
Again, I really like the selection of the wine industry as foundation of this article because there are a lot of different brands of wines and many different types for each brand. The bloggers require a lot of ability to be trusted.
RJGV's excerpts:
ReplyDeleteI found this article extremely revealing in several ways: first as a blog reader who has made purchases on the basis of 'reviewers' opinions, both commercial and non commercial, seeing the way we subconsciously give weight to the different signals that we are sent, and depending on the nature of the sender, the weight we give them to earn our trust; and second, to read about the methodology used to measure the way a blog communicates through its contents, how to measure these signals and how different kinds of bloggers adapt their strategies according to their strengths and weaknesses in order to gain the trust of their readers.
After reading this article, it's easier to identify the signals that blogs with different contexts send and the different manners and strategies bloggers seek to build trust with their readers with a solid reputation, expertise and integrity. Turns out that in social media as in real life, as Shakespeare puts it in Othello (Act 2, Scene 3, Page 12), reputation is indeed immortal.
Since I used to work at a university, I'd imagine that balanced focus would be appreciated: expertise regarding the university processes, both from internal expertise and from external certifications, integrity as an institution and benevolence toward the students, otherwise, the blog would not be considered trustworthy.