I became
interested in doing research last year during my honors communication course. I
took the course knowing it would give me the chance to do research and to apply
for OSCAR. I wanted to challenge myself by trying something new and improving
my academic skillset.
I became
interested in focusing my project on Facebook research because of my interest
in social media. I am a communication major with a concentration in public
relations, and social media is a large contributor to this industry. It is
related to my long-term goals because social media is the newest, most
effective way to communicate with my generation (and it is also the most
popular social network site). I think enhancing my understanding of the most
popular social media site will help me in my eventual career.
On a weekly
basis I have been reading several scholarly articles. I am in the midst of
creating a questionnaire to submit to IRB for approval. While reading these
articles I am jotting notes on strategies previous scholars use when developing
questionnaires to administer to their participants. Also, I am learning about
more key concepts that I can use in my literature review when I write this
piece of my article.
This week I read
an article that further solidified that couples use Facebook for relationship
maintenance. I also learned that relationship visibility is defined as the
extent to which relationships are shown in self-images conveyed to others. This
refers to how often couples post photos of the two together on Facebook to
their extended networks.
