Ability of blogs to engage me

I don’t think I was the intended audience for the first blog. This blog was mainly for educators, but I still felt welcome. I was drawn in, because it was more different than most blogs I read. I’ve never seen a blog in handout form, and this is what drew me in to keep reading it. I definitely found the handout blog very interesting as it explained some of the very things I learned about in an interpersonal communication class. The clarity was amazing, which also helped with keeping me drawn into reading it. I really had no idea what some of the theories were, but after reading, I had a full understanding. The second blog was intended for anyone who wants to find out more about the interpersonal communication that goes on in situations like the break-up of a relationship. I felt welcome to this blog as well. I can’t really say what drew me to this blog. At first, it was the color combinations within the profile itself. As I began reading, everything was broken down so nicely. It was easy to understand and each step to explain the do’s and don’t’s of communcation within the break-up was portrayed to keep the attention of any audience. I also see the third blog as being for whatever audience is interested enough to read it. I was attracted to this blog at first, also because of the color combinations of the profile. When I began reading, I really liked the ideas being portrayed and how they were being explained but also questioned. After a few paragraphs, though, the cohesivness of the paragraphs began to die away. I wanted to see if the blog made more sense later, so I kept reading. After the middle section, the blog did make a lot of sense by the end.

Ideas within blogs

The ideas behind the first blog are expressed in great detail. I explained a lot of the ideas in a previous blog, but basically the writer of the blog made a blog in the form of a handout to educators. The blog defines the ideas behind the Theory of Mind, Transactional Analysis, and the Social Perception Theory. All of the ideas in this blog are based on facts and are pretty straight forward. All the ideas in this blog are looked at by using theories in a very different field from interpersonal communication: social pshchology. The blog looks as if it may have been created for a class. There are also graphs and charts representing how communication effects us. There is even one with the process of communication complete with feedback loop. Overall, because the ideas within this blog are for education use, they are more difficult to understand. Because I have a bit of knowledge with interpersonal communication and the different theories, I understood some of the topics.   The ideas in the second blog are also explained fully. The author goes through five steps of communication within the break-up of a relationship. He explains that these strategies are negative identity management, de-escalation, justification, postitive tone, and behavioral de-escalation.  He also talks about which strategies are safe to use in the situation and which would cause an even more negative environment. Negative identity managament includes blaming the other party. This leaves the other party confused and hurt.  The behavioral de-escalation, he says, is not appropriate to use because avoiding each other does not solve the problem. De-escalation, justification and positive tone are more safe to use as communication is involved in the explanation of the break-up. He uses a few sentences that start with “I think” or “I feel” which discredits him as an author a bit, but overall I understood the ideas and strategies he was portraying.   The third blog explains clearly that communication of any kind is extremely important for us to live as humans. It also delves deeper and explains how critcisms can hurt others and how we as a society are always putting the blame on others with our different ways of communication. At the end the blog goes into a little bit of a “let’s not do this as a society, but let’s fully understand people before we criticize…”. I understand all the ideas that the author is trying to convey, I just feel the whole “don’t do this, do that” part at the end is a little corny and not related completely with the rest of the ideas. Also the ideas going on in the blog are not fully cohesive.

Referencing of blogs

The first blog included a long list of sources used to develop the handout formatted blog. The list of references helps the writers credibility a lot. If I would have just read the blog, which went into a considerable amount of explaining and details, and then got to the end and realized there were no references, I would have wondered if the writer just made up the information.

The second blog doesn’t use any sources throughout. There is one reference to a person named “Cody” in the beginning of the blog, but the writer doesn’t explain who Cody is or if he is a reliable source or not. There were no citations of any kind in the third blog.

Quality of blogs

The quality of the first blog went the furthest in depth into what it was trying to convey. The entire blog is in a handout form illustrating how to use and develop interpersonal skills. The blog explains right off the bat what its purpose is. This is great for readers of the blog, because then they know right away what they are about to read. In this blog, there is also an abstract that explains what points are going to be expressed: theory of the mind, transactional analysis and the social perception theory and how they relate to developing communication skills. It goes far into the realms of these theories, providing charts and graphs to explain each one. The format of the blog is attractive.

There is one comment to this blog. This comment essentially  critiques the entire blog. The writer of the comment also gives the writer of the blog suggestions on how to make their ideas better. There are also a few typos within the comment, but they don’t take away from the larger picture.

The second blog, entitled “Interpersonal Communication” is of amazing quality as well. Here, the author explaining different communication in the break up of a relationship. It doesn’t go as far into detail as the first blog did, but it explains negative and positive managment in this situation. The format of the blog is attractive and it is easy to locate links within the blog. There are no comments to the blog. This was a bit disappointing because I wanted to hear what others had to say on such an interesting outlook on communication in relationships.

The third blog was called, “Criticism”. Overall, it was the poorest written blog I read. It had good ideas and shared some interesting views on how we communicate when we criticise someone, but the ideas seemed a bit random at times and there wasn’t a steady flow to the blog. The layout of the blog, like the others was attractive, and it was easy to find other things on the page. Again, I was disappointed to see there were no comments to this blog.

Purpose of these blogs

One of the blogs I found (located on http://michelle-socialpsychology.blogspot.com/2007/10/effective-interpersonal-communication.html) was strictly informative and also educational. It was a blog in the format of a paper explaining ways one can teach effective interpersonal communication skills.

The second blog I found is more of an informative look at the different communication aspects in certain situations. The main example used in this blog is breaking up a relationship. http://funyz.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/interpersonal-communication/

A third blog explains the importance of communication and expresses its role in criticism. This blog takes on a more informative approach. http://alena2008.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/criticism/

Many of the other blogs I found under interpersonal communication were critiques of books, websites, etc. on interpersonal communication.

Availability of blogs in Speech and Communication

When I first started my search for blogs in my field, I just typed in “speech and communication”. This search brought up tens of thousands results–most having nothing to do with what I was looking for. I delved deeper into my field and looked up “interpersonal communication.” This search brought up some results, but not as many as I had hoped for. Most of the results are located on this website that I have created my blog on. There are definitely not enough blogs on interpersonal communication.