What's going on fellow bloggers?

This week, once again, I will be commenting on my fellow blogger's ideas and seeing what they are up too. I'm focusing on unobtrusive research since it is one of my favorite topics so far and the most recent posts we've blogged about.

The first post that caught my eye was Paige Weiner's blog about fashion. Since we have the same topic, I figured I read about how she explained unobtrusive research also. I loved her post because it made me think about the research tactic in a whole new way. She discusses that designers can use this method to observe how consumers wear their pieces when they don't know they are being watched. She makes a good point when she mentions that it is crucial that the subjects don't know they are being watched because then they might focus more on the outfit than usual. For example, they might perfectly match their shirt and pants that day rather then just throw it on with the first thing they find. After thinking about her example I started to think about how I dress when in these situations. If I know I am going to be observed, I definitely pay more attention to how perfect my outfit is, rather than when I just pull two things out of my closet. Her blog made me think of unobtrusive research in fashion in a completely different way.

The second post was Francesca's blog about celebrities and social media. Her focus last week was about how people conduct unobtrusive research without even knowing what it is. That made me so interested to hear what she continued to say. Interestingly enough, she focused on how we can keep up with our favorite celebs through their twitter posts on a daily basis. This is such a great point because I am always on my twitter account "stalking" my celebs every move. Also I realized I do this in on other social media websites with my friends and family. Facebook is a huge enabler of unobtrusive research because you can see status updates, pictures, and conversations between other people. Francesca's blog got me thinking about how good of a researcher I've been waaaay before I even took PRR 332!

Unobtrusive research is such a common research method and people all over who don't even know a thing about public relations conduct it everyday. This method is also very influential in many decisions. For example, you can be rejected from a school or not get a job because someone looks at your Facebook page. That is unobtrusive research because we do not even know they are looking us up. So for all you potential college or job applicants, clean up your evidence because you never know who is researching you!