For this Observe, I focused on a certain feature of Tumblr. Sometimes when I open the mobile app, there’s a message at the top of the screen telling me that some person or organization is now taking questions. I always assumed that this notification meant that the Q&A was going on right then. However, at least in this scenario, that was not the case. When I clicked on the banner, it took me to the page in the second screenshot, and only there, did it tell you that the event was actually happening on February 26th. So why did I assume that it was happening as I was seeing the notification? In the past, I’ve seen similar banners that I think might have specified that questions were currently being answered (something like, “[person] is taking questions now“). If I did see banners like that, then my assumption makes sense, but there’s a chance that there was no such specification, and I was just making assumptions about the events’ timing in the same way that I am now. If that’s the case, why did I make that assumption? It could have been based around the idea that, originally, tumblr organized content based on the time it was posted/reblogged, so whatever I was saw first (at the top of the screen) on my dash was the most recent post. The fact that the banner was located above that first post may have made it seem even more current than what was on my dash.
There’s a decent chance I’m the only one who made all those assumptions. But if I’m not, did tumblr deliberately place the banner to be misleading about the event’s timing? Or is it just at the top because it’s been promoted?
The banner on my dash
The page I got when I clicked on the banner
