Social Media Research Paper – Term Paper

Research paper on social media

Social media advent has revolutionized communication. The increasing use of smartphone and now the wearable device is taking this revolution to yet another level. Yet studies in social media presence is not factoring in these changes appropriately to keep abreast of changes. This report that was commissioned to provide suggestions on social media module adjustments presents two recommendations for GIS studies and topic discovery and evolution studies. The author brings to attention the current changes to social media communication that necessitate the two areas of knowledge suggested to equip students with the appropriate knowledge to meet awaiting career opportunities.

Despite these possible adjustments to the current module, the author admits challenges that underlay each study suggested and thus recommends a way to mitigate against these challenges.

The author then concludes with remarks on how the new approach will enhance knowledge level among graduates to put them in a better position to tackle future workplace and social welfare requirements.

Introduction

More than ever before, social media presence is finding new meaning and new use in terms of understanding the world around us, social issues in various settings and approaches that could result in potentially lasting social impact. However, the use of social media presence in this manner requires extra knowledge not available in our current social media module.

Purpose and Scope

The report is meant to provide suggestion on two most appropriate topics to be added into the current social media modules to prepare students for awaits them after graduation. The author reviews current literature to pick out two topics of wider interest that would be invaluable additions to the course module. While the topics may constitute a whole course in the undergraduate program, the author suggests a moderation to these courses to make them part of the social media module for a well-integrated approach.

Assumptions

In mapping out the two courses, the author makes two assumptions. First, the author assumes that there will be rapid changes in the areas identified at least for the next two years so that their integration may be complete should the idea be bought. Second, the author also assumes that the two courses will work to cover the current gap in knowledge among ongoing students and graduates over what constitutes real-life application of social media knowledge in the context of 21st century. Beyond these two assumptions, others factors should be held constant.

Methods

The author uses empirical analysis of available literature in the field of social media studies. Through this analysis, the author hopes to present well-balanced findings that reflect on currency, urgency and validity of the suggestions. The articles reviewed are peer-reviewed and from scholarly journals to ensure the credibility of the information presented. To come with these articles, the author searched the Google Scholar using the key word “social medial” and a combination of these words and others such as “21st studies”, “challenges” and “solutions.” The author also consulted widely with standard organizations such as IEEE through their websites to study new standards for Web 2.0 technologies upon which social media is built. All these pieces of information were then brought together and discussed authoritatively, before coming up with recommendations.

Limitation

The only identified limitation of this report is that it relies on secondary data and may require a primary research to substantiate the recommendations made here.

Definition

Social media community is defined, for the purpose of this report, as a group of people with shared interest who interact communally over social media platforms in a meaningful way.

Research paper on social media effects

First Topic: Geo-social Contents as Emerging Social Media Trend

GPS-enabled social media sites and smartphone are revolutionizing social media presence in a big way. In 2012, Foursquare – one of the GPS-enabled social media sites – reported a total of 4.5 billion “check-ins” in its traffic where each user was able to link their presence, photos and even notes to a particular location or venue (Foursquare|About Foursquare, 2012). Instagram, an image-sharing service, allows its users to attach to each photo, latitude-longitude coordinates just like its counterpart Flickr. This trend is followed by a host of other social media services. Twitter, which brags of 500 tweets a day, has about 5 million of these tweets tagged with geospatial coordinates. In their recent research, Pew Researchers confirm this trend of geo-social footprints that has taken center-stage when it comes to social media presence and experience. The opportunities created by this trend for social scientists is immense. The most important factor is that this location-based data is voluntary and most importantly, public. As opposed to proprietary data, geo-social footprints do not require a social researcher to undergo a lot of hassle to get the right geospatial data as is with highly sensitive proprietary location-based data and the expensive lab-based geospatial data. Needless to say, with this high availability of geospatial data, basic scientific researches on social life can be accomplished with much ease. The kind of invaluable information for such researches that were initially difficult to obtain has now been made widely available through social media.

Moreover, these pieces of location-based data can form a crucial part of geo-social intelligence, especially for information system designers. With this kind of information, these designers are in a position to optimized searches for given pieces of information associated with particular locations to facilitate data retrieval in location-based researches. This way, it will be easy to map out human behavior dynamics associated with specific locations locally and globally. Additionally, it will also be possible to figure out how ideas diffuse across society and the societal impact of this. In particular, this information will be important when it comes to mapping geo-social footprints into impacts real-world context.