Exploring U.S. agricultural commodity organizations’ use of blogs as a communications tool

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2012-08

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Communication technology can be used to change individuals’ views to promote change in cultural, behavioral, and psychological beliefs. For these changes to happen, people need be able to ask questions, process the information in an active environment, debate and discuss the subject matter, and apply the information presented. Blogs and other forms of communication allow people to be involved in the communication process.

The purpose of this study was to explore how agricultural commodity organizations use blogs as a communication tool. The researcher accessed these blogs by purposively selecting U.S. agricultural commodity groups from two agricultural associations – the National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB) and the American Agricultural Editors’ Associations (AAEA). This study used a descriptive, qualitative research design consisting of in-depth interviews with nine blog authors of selected U.S. agricultural commodity groups.

The results indicated that the organizations started blogging to communicate with a variety of publics. U.S. agricultural commodity organizations used some online analytics and supporting social media outlets to measure blog success, but the organizations had not predetermined who are their target audiences. The results for this study provide an understanding of how organizations are utilizing blogs, which will provide insight for others in the agricultural industry who may decide to use this technology.

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