Reflection

First off, I would like to say that this project ended up being a success for our blog. During the final two weeks it seemed like I was getting emails everyday saying that there was someone new following our blog, or commenting. This is all that I could have asked for, to have people reading our writing and appreciating the hard work that we put in.

With that being said, I can think of a couple reasons why people started viewing our blog. During the final two weeks, all the members really kicked into overdrive and started posting a lot to ensure that we had ten posts each. From the viewers perspective, they saw this a single blog posting nearly five times per day. That’s when we really started seeing people start to follow our blog. I think that people appreciated what we were putting into this blog, and the information that we were conveying. I have looked at the posts of my fellow group members, and every blog post was calculated towards our larger goal of having people make small lifestyle adjustments in order to be more environmentally friendly. When people see five of these posts per day, it sends a message that we are committed to changing minds and actions for a good cause.

Unfortunately I do not think we made it past clictivism and into real activism. This occurred simply because the project is over and therefore the blog will no longer be kept. We just started getting followers, which is the first phase of any sort of activism; have people start paying attention. Now that people are in fact paying attention by following our posts, the next step is to boost participation by using some of the techniques that we mentioned in class. This includes creating a webpage where people can post the eco-friendly things they have been doing, as well as directly asking our viewers about the green things they have been doing lately and having them post in the comment sections and articulate it. I think this would greatly boost engagement because people love being recognized and appreciated. They would post their stories in our site knowing that like minded people are in fact reading them and posting their own stories. With time we could create a web community that cares about the environment, with people essentially bragging about their actions on our site. As more and more people see these series of posts and read about the specific examples, they would hopefully also use these examples in their own lives and subsequently start posting stories of their own.

As I mentioned above, I think a large reason why we started to get followers was because of the sheer number of posts that we emitted per day (6 people at 10 posts each, 60 posts in about one month!). However, this would not have worked if the posts didn’t have substance to them. I personally worked with both the literacy and electracy apparatus’, which I think go hand in hand for a blog. In terms of literacy, many of my posts were written in the style of a news article or a short story. People are used to reading these styles, and therefore they are almost expected for a blog. However, electracy style is also fitting, using memes and much shorter posts that convey an idea or message without a 1000 word explanation. I think people enjoyed having these options, especially when they see 5 posts per day. They can pick which ones out of the 5 to read, giving them options and the freedom to choose. Anyone who enjoys long articles were satisfied, as well as people who wanted quick hits of information and pictures in order to get their green fix. These two apparatus’ really helped promote our blog, making it a success in the end.