My criteria for evaluating blogs would probably be
considered by most to be a bit too intense- as an avid reader of blogs of all
kinds I have very high standards for their quality. As I evaluated “Barf Blog,”
a blog on food safety maintained by a Kansas professor, I came to the
conclusion that the blog is an effective dispatcher for food safety news but an
unprofessional and ineffective source for consistent original content and
interpretation of said news. Now, this judgment was not made without thorough
consideration to my previously mentioned criteria- criteria which I will briefly
summarize in order to give insight into my process.
Firstly,
given that the “About Us” section of Barf Blog indicated that the blog was
meant to promote awareness about food safety through educated and well informed
posts with research as evidence, I classified this blog as a “Professional”
(information oriented) type. As such,
my evaluation is limited to a specific set of criteria applicable to
that type. A few general standards
included in this criteria are credibility, visual appeal , organizational
fluency, and interesting/meaningful topic coverage.
Although
the “About Us” section of the blog does do favors for the authors ethos as far
as professional credibility goes- the authors mention that they are all doctors
and that all the opinions they publish must be evidence based- the random 15
blog posts I read showed a consistent lack of professionalism and self gathered
evidence to back up opinions. Many times a brief summary of a food safety event
would be written, without any evident judgment making, and then the “reins”
would be handed over to a random news source and the remainder of the blog post
would be an extended quote from another published article. Personal anecdotes
were often shared in context with topics that had seemingly no relation. For
example, one author discussed his daughter’s boyfriend’s hair’s similarities to
his own youthful mane. Curse words also frequently littered the blog posts, and
while this gave an intimate and friendly tone preferable in a personal blog,
the crass language detracts significantly from the credibility of a
professional and information based blog. Additionally, some posts were not even
vaguely related to food safety topics, including; “War Sucks But Sometimes Necessary: Anzac day in Australia”
and “Soccer’s Suarez hit with 10-game ban for Ivanovic bite” which talked about
Australian holidays and soccer, respectively. In the visual and organizational
sense the presence of these random posts throws off the flow of the information
and purpose of the blog as a whole.
Overall, Barf Blog seems to fall
short of its stated goals as a professional food safety information source,
leaning towards the informal and losing credibility and fluency due to this as
well as inconsistent and confusing structure. Despite this negative conclusion,
I would argue that this blog has a lot of appeal as a personal blog- vaguely
oriented around the general topic of food safety but not purportedly dedicated
to it. If I evaluated this blog with my criteria for personal blogs it would
most likely perform favorably.
Nice job Cordi, I feel the same way about the issues they covered such as the Australian holiday. I really like your introduction which set up your criteria very well. Your conclusion was a strong finish. Nice work :)
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you mentioned here. I think you could have added more criteria and expanded on the criteria that you had already mentioned. Other than that good job.
ReplyDeleteCordi, the strengths of this blog are, as usual, your confident, intelligent voice and your synthesis of detail into your argument. Nicely done!! Here's what could use some work:
ReplyDelete1. Avoid meta-writing (example: "Now, this judgment was not made without thorough consideration to my previously mentioned criteria- criteria which I will briefly summarize in order to give insight into my process.") It tends to drag down the momentum you're building with content and tends to state the obvious (we know, or at least hope, you'll be using criteria).
2. Don't waiver on being very specific and very qualified: ("Additionally, some posts were not even vaguely related to food safety topics, including; “War Sucks But Sometimes Necessary: Anzac day in Australia” and “Soccer’s Suarez hit with 10-game ban for Ivanovic bite” which talked about Australian holidays and soccer, respectively.") He does give context for each of these examples, and while your original judgment about them not being terribly relevant definitely stands, you've got to acknowledge his even partial-acknowledgment or risk your own credibility.
In general, however, a very lovely, thoughtful evaluation.
Reading your post, I'm startled by how closely the ideas parallel what I was trying to express in my own review (I promise I didn't read yours first!). I agree with you basically 100% -- the writers all have the credentials to do something great, but they write far too unprofessionally and do too little of their own reporting for it to be a particularly useful or credible source.
ReplyDelete