Online Social Networks

Reading the exploratory essay by a student named James Gardiner was somewhat enlightening.  In this essay, he highlighted some research that he had begun to do regarding Online Social Networks for a major paper that he was working on.

His research included several independent studies and surveys that were conducted, mostly with teenagers and young adults.  These studies touched on topics from personal information provided online in the social network atmosphere, to how this arena of socializing might affect communication skills, and plenty of other pro and con aspects in between.

My favorite part of Gardiner’s essay was the statement from Graham Bowley, an author from the Financial Times international business newspaper.  According to Bowley, young people were using online social networks “to reinforce existing relations with the group of friends they already had from their offline lives.  For them, MySpace had become and electronic version of the local mall or park, the place they went to with their friends when they just wanted to hang out”.  Bringing back my youthful mall memories, this instantly helped me equate how and why the newer generation utilizes online social networks.

Still unsure of his thesis for his final project, Gardiner intended on continuing his research on OSNs.  He felt he needed to investigate more on the negative aspects of OSNs and then wrote an argument on this topic.

Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream

The report titled “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream” was very informative.  I was taken aback with the results that “The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press” obtained from the random survey that they conducted with Muslim Americans regarding their outlooks, values and attitudes.

Our text book states that “Typically, informative writing is valuable to the extent that it brings something needed, new, or surprising to the audience and therefore enlarges their view of the topic.”  Prior to reading this report, I think that I probably would have expected a much different outcome from the survey. To learn that most Muslim Americans feel the same as “traditional Americans” about living life in America, opportunities available to them and that most reject Islamic extremists, gave me a new view on this subject.  It also made the information interesting, since it was not what I anticipated.

The report thoroughly explained how the data for the survey was gathered.  The key findings were easy to understand, as they were well written and clearly laid out in a bulleted format.  The charts that were included in the essay did a very good job of backing up the data that was presented in the text.