I have a couple of ideas for a research project and am trying to flush out which one might be the most interesting project to pursue. The following is a list of ideas.
1) Research how society uses Wikipedia. Wikipedia contains a mass amount of information and is used by people worldwide. How accurate is this information? Who reviews the information to make sure that it is accurate? What type of people post information and what motivates these people to use their own spare time to disseminate knowledge to the benefit of others? I thought the article on participation inequality was interesting because it gave statistics on the number of people who contribute and the number of people who simply observe. Is Wikipedia in fact a useful tool considering that the information comes from a select few?
2) Research online communties that focus on the Iraq war effort and our fallen soldiers. Are the pictures of the war more accurate than the written accounts of the war? How does this effect society's impression of our involvement in Iraq?
3) Research how presidential candidates have used myspace to promote their campaigns. The candidates all have a myspace page. Did campaigning via the web have a positive, negative, or neutral effect on their campaigns? I did a brief look on myspace to see what the candidates posted. At first glance it appears that information is minimal, however I would be interested to research the motivation behind the candidates using myspace and whether or not they found it successful. Is using myspace a new a way for politicians to reach those people who might not otherwise care?
I think I am leaing towards #3. It'd be interesting to see if candidates were able to reach a younger generation because they began to speak to them in the same way younger generations communicate with each other.
Any suggestions/comments would be very helpful.
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My first reaction to all three of your ideas is WAY TOO BIG!
That said, I like all of them--but we're going to have to find a way to do what you want to do in a summer course.....which means you have about 2-3 weeks to collect data (the rest is analyzing and writing it up). So....let's think about how we might focus things.
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