For our intensive research, we focused on word choice and what that might convey about the opinions one might have regarding. We thought that by looking at the words the Federation of Western Outdoor Club was using in it’s publications Outdoors West, we could get a better idea of how their ideas surrounding wilderness and conservation were changing over time. After quickly skimming them, we came up with a list of twelve “buzzwords” that we then searched for using a character recognition program. We completed this on one issue from 2000-2012 and one issue from 1967. FWOC uses the words wilderness and resolution quite a bit and this did not really change over time. We were then curious as to how the general population’s word usage changed over time, as well, and whether it was consistent with FWOC’s lack of development.
To analyze what the general population was interested in over time, we used Google Trends to create a graph of how often words were being used over time. We found that words like wilderness were not being googled as much as words like experience and while experience does not necessarily pertain to outdoor experience, it does illustrate the values of the greater population. The greater population’s word usage changed over time while FWOC’s did not. It is not necessarily a bad thing that FWOC is not evolving with the rest of the population, but it could inhibit them in terms of obtaining new members of a younger generation.
These two findings are important in that they could provide key evidence as to why FWOC is having difficulty gaining new members. If the younger people that they are hoping will join their organization cannot relate to FWOC’s practices and values, they will not be inclined to join this organization. While a lot of the people googling these terms are younger than the average age of a FWOC member, it still would be important to gain concrete data as to what younger people believe about wilderness and conservation. This thought is what led us to create our Fulcrum survey that we would administer in a setting full of the young people FWOC hopes to gain. In analyzing this data, we will determine whether the belief systems of these young people adequately align with FWOC and its values.