Sunday, September 23, 2012

Research Project


Topic: Social Networking

I have decided to do my research project on social networking. I want to take a look at email and instant messaging, but I definitely want to focus on Facebook. After watching The Social Network, I became very intrigued about how it became so popular so quickly. I would also like to compare other social networks like Twitter, Tumblr and even Youtube and look into how people communicate on those sites as well. I want to answer the question, Why are these sites so popular?

I mainly want to focus on the privacy aspect of social networking sites. A lot of personal information is put on these sites, and often times, your personal information is available to everyone. I know there are privacy settings are available on many sites, but there are ways around them. I am interested in learning about the more negative effects of social networks, because I don’t think that many people are aware of them. I also want to look at and compare how people communicate in real life and how people communicate over the Internet. Is talking to someone online the same as talking to someone in real life?

 
Click here for Dipity Timeline.

1 comment:

  1. The thing about the rise of Facebook was the fact that other networking sites such as Myspace and LiveJournal had been around for a while and most colleges had set up some sort of networking for there students as well. Mark Zuckerberg took an idea and made it flourish.
    I think that comparing each of the differnet sites as to how people communicate on them is a great idea and would suggest also maybe looking into the various instant messenger systems that led to things like twitter and the like.
    I think most people are aware of the negative effects of social networking sites because that is how they are presented in the news, it is very rare that we come across any positive news about social networking sites and think it could be interesting to write a paper on the positive aspects. Had i not committed to virtual worlds I think I might have gone this route because of the inspiration i got from reading what you have here.

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