Proposal

This proposal will focus on a current problem within the relm of sociable media.  We’ve chosen to specifically cover the dangers of online dating.  Derek Varga, Michele Aulenti and Jessica Fine will be co-authoring the final research paper.  In addition, we will conduct research, put together a presentation and author all other documents related to this project.  Rather than dividing tasks among group members, we will work synergistically as a team to accomplish the goals of this project.  This will allow for each member of the group to have an active role in every task and be familiar with all of the resources.  This will result in a well rounded presentation. 

The problem we will be addressing is the dangers of online dating.  We will focus on online predators specifically.  This topic has become more and more relevant in society today.  It has become a problem for any and everyone using the Internet today.  With sources like myspace.com and facebook.com, most people are displaying their personal information online for all to have access.  While young teens use the sites to keep in touch with friends, older predators may be using their information and preying on them, unknowingly.  Our goal is to cover the topic very specifically so this information may be directly passed onto this young age group and they can protect themselves accordingly.

The immediate audience for this presentation will be the Interactive Communication Introduction class, however our final paper will target an audience of mainly young pre-teens and teens.  Since this paper will be written at a college level, we suspect this would be read by educators of young teens, who would then use our white paper as a source to teach. 

We have had contact with danah boyd who gave the names of several people who she considered experts on the topic of online dating.  The two contacts danah gave me are Andrew Fiore and Nicole Ellison.  They were very helpful in providing their research papers as well as links used.  From these links and articles, we stumbled upon a few other authors we are now contacting.  They are Judith Donath, whom we’ve read this semester, Dan Ariely, a professor at MIT and Jeana Frost, also involved with the MIT online dating project. 

The articles we will rely on will be “Online Match-Making with Virtual Dates” written by Martha Lagace which talks about how Technology influences relationships, virtual dates and how couples communicate online, and the interfaces of dating websites and what should be improved. The next article is called “Risky Business: Why people Feel Safe in Sexually Explicit On-Line Communication” written by Diane F. Witmer which talks about fantasizing in Cyberspace and how embarrassing CMC can be and why people feel secure when doing such actions, how people communicate in the computer age by using this medium they can communicate with other people by any sorts of communication i.e. by e-mail or within social groups, Rights and Responsibilities: Thorny questions for system administrators and users which mentions about privacy and how people need to know their rights and responsibilities of keeping their passwords or usernames private and finally it mentions seeking solutions to how to know what privacy is and what is good privacy. The last article we will be using is called “The Emergence of Romantic Relationships online” written by Main Findings which talks about percentages and information about people who do online date and if they are heterosexual or just single and the article tells us the differences.

The top academic journal or industry publication that relates to the work we will be addressing is called “My date with a fraudster; Ex-colleagues. Sex Pests. Oh, and conmen. Welcome online dating” written by Catherine Murphy talks about the dating scene and how fraudsters are becoming more popular with on-line dating. This especially happens in Ireland.

A website that relates to they key ideas we will be focusing on is http://www.isafe.org/, which focuses on educating students, teachers, law enforcement, parents, and others on current internet safety strategies. The website makes use of various resources such as chat rooms, virtual training, and even contests in order to educate on principles of internet safety.

There are several key ideas that will play particularly important roles in this project. One of these is that of determining what type of personal information is safe for youths to publicly display on the internet. Another is how youths should safely interact with those who they meet on the internet and what precautions they should take when making new contacts. Finally, we will focus on what type of action parents and educators should take if they suspect of confirm that a youth’s safety may be at risk due to a contact they have established over the internet.

Our plan for assembling the annotated bibliography is simply to keep track of all the readings and sources.  We will do so by keeping a running text file which contains the names, titles, links, and any other pertinent information about the resources. This will make for a quick assembly with relative ease. 

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