This post started out by reading through all of the posts from unit 10 assignment 1, where each student empirically examined an aspect of judgment and decision making on the Internet. After this we had to remind ourselves of the best way to respond to discussion board posts. Finally, we had to create 2 response posts, including one to a student who examined the same aspect of judgment and decision making on the Internet as I did, and one who examined a different aspect.
The first person I chose to reply to was my old chat group member, Weiyan. She read the article written by Luca (2016), which is “Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com”, which studied the relationship between Yelp and restaurants revenue.
I explored a different aspect of judgment than her, but I thought the topic seemed interesting, which is why I chose to respond to her. In my response to her, I told her that I really liked how she summarized the study. I did not read this article, but just from reading her post, I feel that I truly understand it, which is a testament to her doing a great job! Her choices to include numeric values as well as information about which reviews that consumers are more responsive to were awesome, and helped facilitate my understanding.
I agreed with her point that the findings of the study make sense. Positive reviews are certainly an influence for people to try a certain restaurant. Since people can access these reviews easily on their phones, it makes sense that people would check reviews before going to a restaurant, and attend restaurants that were rated more positively by others.
I also connected with her, as I have thought that Yelp and other online reviews are very helpful, especially when in a new place. When my family goes on vacation in a place we are not very familiar with, we always check online reviews before attending restaurants or other attractions!
Next, I responded to a girl named Valerie, who explored the same aspect of judgement that I did. We read the article from Niemelä & Dingemanse (2017), “Trustworthiness of Online Beer Ratings as a Source of Social Information”.
I connected with her, as I also thought it was humorous to study beer reviews! That is one of the primary reasons I chose to read this paper, because it caught my eye.
I discussed that I liked how she summarized the article. Her point about why they chose to study beer specifically is great, as it sheds light on reasons behind the study. She also mentioned that they compared non-blind beer ratings to ratings collected blindly, which is an important point, and I do not think I mentioned it in my discussion board post.
I agree with her point about being surprised that the reputations of the beer did not effect its rating. My initial reaction to this article was that I expected different results than what actually happened. Additionally, I agree with the point that there is not much of a reason to target a manufactured good with negative reviews. I hadn’t thought about it in that way before, but that was an insightful point.
I talked about how I wondered what the results would be if they studied a certain food or object, rather than beer. It would be interesting to see if bias changes depending on the product being examined.
Reflecting on this assignment, it is always nice to get the chance to read through the posts of all the students in my section. It allows me to get to know what topics different people are interested, and read their interpretations of different articles. Since we are only in chat groups with a couple of other students, this is the way we are able to get to know the other students that we don’t routinely chat with!
Also, it is often structured like this, but it is always good to respond to one post of someone exploring the same issue, and one post of someone exploring a different issue. This way, we are able to really master the material that we had already read about, but to also interact with new information! This balance definitely promotes critical thinking and balance, which are very useful.
This assignment was relatively brief, but still good! As I have said so many times before, it is so important to have variance in assignments, so having some days where we respond to the posts of others is a nice break from just making posts ourselves. It keeps me more engaged, and allows to to grow more as a student as well!
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