Here are three sample prospectuses (prospecti? prospecten? whatever).
Date: September 16, 2009
To: Bradley Dilger
From: Bradley Dilger
Subject: Social network services and business
Bradley,
For my first analytical essay I want to write about the commercial use of social network services in advertising and marketing. Two reasons. First, I constantly get ads for Mafia Wars on Facebook: a game I’ve NEVER played and NEVER will (I block it, even), and I’ve never clicked on a Facebook ad. So I have no idea how they are making money. Obviously, this is a big part of their function, since all social network services (at least the ones I know) use advertising. I’d like to learn more. Secondly, I liked Gladwell’s approach to advertising: he writes that we could learn a thing or two from them and use it for better purposes. Since I’m a professor, perhaps I could use some advertising strategies to make more effective use of social network services in my classes.
Anyway, here are some books that I found in the WIU libraries catalog which seem up my alley:
What would Google do / Jeff Jarvis --I’ve read this one and it’s not as useful as I hoped. It’s a bunch of anecdotes about the “Google way." Still, there are some interesting things in it about the approach Google uses for ads.
Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business / Steve Holzner ---read it. How-to almost totally obsolete since Facebook works differently now. Some good advice, I guess. But still a little creepy.
MySpace marketing : creating a social network to boom your business / Sean Percival. --just looks creepy. or funny. or both, especially since MySpace isn’t doing so hot.
The connect effect : building strong personal, professional, and virtual networks / Michael Dulworth. --interesting because it’s NOT just about social network services
There are a MILLION things online. A lot of it is how-to stuff, like this:
Facebook Marketing: Articles and Resources
http://www.doshdosh.com/facebook-marketing-resources/
Some of it comes from Facebook themselves:
http://www.facebook.com/marketing?_fb_noscript=1
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?src=pf
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/21/facebook-publishes-insiders-guide-to-viral-marketing/
Tentatively, I’m going to pick up Gladwell’s argument about finding good persuasive strategies in social network services and run with it, arguing that there’s a happy medium between the creepy use of SNS for marketing and blocking everything and freaking out.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Bradley
Megan agreed to share hers (thanks!). I have two minor suggestions for improvement: (1) Avoid the “other side” language—that’s really not what’s being proposed here (thankfully). (2) Add author names, publications, and dates to the citations. This need not be formal, but most complete citations are always best.
Date: September 16, 2009
To: Bradley Dilger
From: Megan Soger
Subject: Girls, boys, and social network sites
My topic for my essay is going to talk about girls and boys and what types of social networks they prefer. My idea is based of off Rosenbloom’s, “Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain” article. I am going to be presenting a counter-like argument. She talks about how girls use social networks like MySpace and how they spend their time creating layouts and glitter animations, however, she does not bring up what it is that the boys are spending their time doing. Rosenbloom only says that boys are not on these sites. I would like to talk about online gaming systems and forums. To me this is what the boys seem to be spending their time on. Some examples I know from friends include a website created for Halo 3, Assassins Creed, and Call of Duty 4. On these websites people are allowed to comment back and forth to each other (similar to a blog) and they can learn techniques to complete levels by talking with other people who like these similar games. So really I would like to take Rosenbloom’s article and explain it more and show the other side of the story.
In the Pew Internet Study on teens and social media it tells us that 93% of teens use the internet. According to what Rosenbloom talks about this would make it sound like the majority of that 93% are female. I want to find this out. In fact, in the Pew study it states that boys are more likely to be posters and sharers of videos online. This is one of the examples I would like to incorporate into my paper. However, the Pew study does support Rosenbloom by saying that girls dominate the blogospher, but again, I want to show the other side as well.
In searching for this topic I found many articles that I think would be very useful. The first article I found was “Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming” and it looks at the expanding female population in massive multiplayer online role-playing environments and it looks to understand the different reasons as to why females might be participating in them. The next article is titled, “Gender Differences and Styles in the Use of Digital Games.” This article states that different studies claim that males spend more time than females do on playing digital games. They had data analyzed so they could look at gender differences in the time spent on digital games, most popular and the preferred genre. The next article is called, “Gender Differences in Social Networks” and it looks at the social networks of males and females. It states that males showed to have larger social networks than the females did. It also showed the different reasons why males like social networks (i.e. status). The fourth article I found was “Breaking the Stereotype: The Case of Online Gaming.” This article states that the majority of players are male (85%). The fifth article is “Adolescent Internet use: What we expect, what teens report” and it breaks down internet usage and who uses the internet more, males or females. The next one is “Girls and gaming: a summary of the research with implications for practice.” This one talks about how boys and girls are both equally skilled at using computers but that boys are just more likely to choose to play with them. It also states that from a young age children are taught that computers are a “boys’ toy”. The last article I found was titled, “Gender dynamics and the social and spatial organization of computer gaming.” This article talks of how computer gaming is a leisure activity and it looks at the relationship between gender and the social and spatial organization of computer gaming. However, it shows that there is more popularity among females than there use to be so this is becoming less gendered.
Please let me know if there is anything I need to change before starting with my paper. I hope I’m heading in a good direction. There’s so many great articles out there! Thanks for the help and all of the advice with my topic thus far. I greatly appreciate it.
-Megan Soger
Thanks to Stacy for sharing.
Date: September 16, 2009
To: Bradley Dilger
From: Stacy Jones
Subject: Prospectus for GH 101/21
The topic I want to focus on for my first analytical essay is how happiness and other emotions can be contagious through social networks. I think it is so interesting how people interact with each other and spread their joy, sadness, or anger. In my essay I will look at the psychology behind emotions and how our brain interprets different emotional arousals. Then take that and show how we mimic facial expressions and how emotions can be contagious. I want to then look at who is more capable of spreading these kinds of emotions from person to person. Along with the types of people who spread emotion easily I will look at how sometimes we associate ourselves through homophily, which is the principle that people hang around other people that are similar to them than dissimilar, and how we feed off of those people around us.
I found a lot of readings that I thought would be helpful for my paper. They are as follows:
Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point. New York: Back Bay Books, 2002.
Hatfield, Elaine, John T. Cacioppo, and Richard L Rapson. Emotional Contagion. New York: University of Cambridge, 1994.
Myers, David G. Psychology. 9th ed. Holland, MI: Worth, 2010.
Provine, Robert R. “Yawning.” American Scientists 93.6 (2005): 532-539. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. WIU Libraries, Macomb, IL. 16 Sep. 2009
Goleman, Daniel. “Happy or Sad, a mood can prove contagious.” New York Times 15 Oct. 1991: Page 1, Section C.
Gonzales, Jennifer, Miriam Castillo, and Alan Swinkels. "Perceptions of Contagious Emotions and Contagious People." Psi Chi Journal of Undergraduate Research 7 (2002): 185-91. The National Honor Society in Psychology. Web. 16 Sept. 2009.
McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin, James M. Cook. “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Annual Review of Sociology 27.1 (2001): 415-444. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. WIU Libraries, Macomb, IL. 16 Sep. 2009
Provine, Robert R. “Laughing, Tickling, and the Evolution of Speech and Self.” Current directions in psychological science 13.6 (2004): 215-218. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. WIU Libraries, Macomb, IL. 16 Sep. 2009
Fowler, James H., Nicholas A Christakis. “Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis of the Framingham Heart Study social network.” BMJ: British medical Journal 338.7685 (2009): 23-27. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. WIU Libraries, Macomb, IL. 11 Sep. 2009
The Psychology of Facial Expression. Ed. James A Russell and Jose Miguel Fernandez-Dols. New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Provine, Robert R. Laughter : a scientific investigation. New York : Viking, 2000.
Any thoughts?
Stacy Jones