Week Two: Thoughts on Researching and Analysis of Findings

I struggled to narrow down my topic to a subject that was both relevant to my field of study and that would be of interest to my fellow students.  I chose to address the impact that social media has on perpetuating violence among our youth.  Having children that grew up during the digital age, I have been very aware of the trend to engage in, document and publicize violence among our youth.  Sadly this phenomenon extends beyond school age children and reaches out to the adult population as well.   Recently there was a video circulating on Facebook of an African American female brutally attacking a Caucasian woman who made the mistake of walking through the wrong neighborhood with her young child.  It was horrible to watch.  Sadly, it seemed the purpose of the attack was to gain thug credibility amongst this young ladies group.  She posted it on her YouTube channel like it was something to be proud of. 

Almost everyone has a cell phone equipped with a camera and Internet connectivity.   It’s so easy to point and shoot and post.   I question that if the popularity of such videos were to drop, would the instances of violence drop as well.  So many seek their 5 minutes of fame on YouTube by participating in the most ridiculous stunts, aiming to “break the internet” with millions of hits or just simply be cool amongst their social network.  If we remove the audience, do we remove the supply?  Should sites that allow such things to be posted be held accountable?  Should law enforcement be doing more to seek out these attackers and bring them to justice?  How do we support the innocent victims and help them to recovery?

As I started my research I quickly learned that there is so much to think about.  This topic covers so much from internet gang banging to school violence.  Who are the victims and who are the perpetrators?  Cyber bullying is such a hot topic and there seems to be much available on this topic but digging down into the correlation between the use of social media and violence among children and young adults required me to really narrow down my search terms.  Most of my searches did not return the results I wanted.   I had to use more specific search terms and make use of the areas of focus within the Leatherby Libraries.  Having the ability to select databases that focus on Criminal Justice and Sociology made it easier to find relevant materials.

I learned this week that I have much to learn about effective research and use of online resources.  I am off to make use of the Online Writing Community to learn how to conduct better research.