Possible Topic

Jennice Lee

1: Name your topic
The Application of Effective Marketing and Promotion strategies in On-line Virtual World
(Mostly exploring through Second Life)

Step 2: Add a question
-What are the marketing/promotional strategies have been used in online virtual world?
-How are they applied in virtual world?
Are they similar to real-world applications? or are they different?
-Have they been effective?
Most effective strategies? Most commonly or popularly used ones?


Step 3: Motivate your question
- There has been a big buzz on media that many companies are now looking for a new channel of their marketing/promotion attempts in online virtual world, and Second Life has been one of them.
Big companies like American Apparel or Krafts have attempted to generate a new type of promotions of their real-world products through this new marketing outlet. But it's reported that they haven't been so successful.
It is apparent that on-line virtual world such as Second Life will eventually be an essential vehicle for the application of marketing and promotional plans, but this area hasn't been much explored yet.
I would like to explore on maketing and promotional strategies that will be more aggressively applied in online virtual world. (Detailed focus of the study is not decided yet.)

potential new topic

Carolyn French

Step 1: Name your topic

Differences in availability to technology.

Step 2: Add a question

How do differences in availability to technology affect future academic achievement?

Step 3: Motivate your question

Different schools are equipped with different forms of technology, dependent upon the funding for that school. Some families cannot afford the latest technologies, some can. As a result, children of different socioeconomic backgrounds are exposed to different technologies. As computer literacy becomes a bigger part of higher education and jobs what happens to children who did not have computers in their classrooms or in their homes.

Seth Gullion's topic

Step 1: Name your topic
... Hmm, we'll get to a name...

I am trying to learn about evolving narrative forms and language.

Step 2: Add a question
Because I want to find out what role written language will serve in a world that seems to increasingly favor visual storytelling.

Step 3: Motivate your question
In order to help my reader understand how written language is cyclical, and how this is affecting modern storytelling techniques.

Basically, I'd like to examine the phenomena of written language becoming fused with pictures, such as emoticons, and how this affects different kinds of storytelling techniques and fictional genres.

Big Cutesiz Of!

Virtual Goods (?)

Noah Macinskas
Still a little shaky, but hoping this narrows some things down.

Step 1: Name your topic: "Something about Virtual Goods?"
I am trying to learn about (working on writing about studying). Virtual Goods

Step 2: Add a question
Because I want to find out who uses them and why they buy them.

Step 3: Motivate your question
In order to help my reader understand what Virtual Goods really are and why there is such a demand and business concerning them.

In Lulz We Trust

Adam Church
Project Proposal

I am studying Internet subcultures, paying specific attention to thread and forum activity because of growing tendencies toward the subversive & anti-cultural, and I hope to illustrate/expose their role as a super-contextual vigilante.

I am focusing on a handful of websites, namely encyclopediadramatica.com but also ytmnd.com and 4chan.org and youtube, though ED appears chief among them. So far, I have found parallels to Bakunin’s theoretical anarchist organizational principles, and to the aesthetic models of the Situationists and (cinematic) Formalists. ED functions as a post-ironic social body/organism evidencing distinct egoistic behaviors, yet features anonymous participation only. It recollects mentalities and structures from Hobbe’s dark leviathan to Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. I am also examining these internet phenomenon in terms of the disintegration of the individual and group think. More than likely I will indulge a fair amount of psychoanalysis and anthropological/sociological criticism.


So far I am considering two forms of expression for this research, either some degree of creative Sci-Fi project or a flat out essay. Honestly, it’d be much easier for me to just create some kind of critical expository piece in a digital medium. Noting that, my working title is either Cultural Cannibalism or Anti-culturalism, with the subheading of “In Lulz We Trust” (taken directly from ED’s motto).

Obviously, my main hurdle is narrowing this down into a manageable project. I have many questions, but I have yet to determine the best specific line of enquiry.

Basic Topic Description

Carolyn French
Foster Care in Spain and the United States.

I want to do a comparative study of the foster care systems in Spain and the United States. Hopefully, this study will reveal possible solutions to some of the problems of the current foster care system in America. Currently, this system can not adequately care for and manage the children that it is supposed to protect. I plan on studying abroad in Spain Spring semester and I will use this time to research their foster care system. I am not sure if the system in Spain is nationwide or differs by region. If it does vary by region than I will focus on the practices in Bilbao, the city where I will be studying. I would like to do this through researching public policy and interviewing social workers, foster parents, and other people who are directly involved with the system. I am interested in learning about the differences between these two systems and why these differences exist, the reasoning behind the usage of these methods. I believe that an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of Spain’s system will prove useful when attempting to improve United States foster care. At the very least, it will provide a different perspective that may offer new options or encourage a different approach.

I hope to help my reader understand some ways the foster care system in the United States can be improved and why it is a problem that needs to be addressed.

I have not decided the best way to use multimedia to present my research. I am considering an interactive website that would allow visitors to explore the different components of each foster care system. This seems to be an easy way to compare the two systems. I think it will be easier to choose which form of multimedia will work best for my project after I have completed more of my research.

Creative Merger: Viewing Serialized, Web-Based Storylines as a Creative Avenue Toward Marketing Success

Through my thesis project, I’m trying to gain an understanding of web-launched, serialized storylines as both a creative art form, and marketing tool. Mini, serialized webisodes offer all the advantages of a syndicated television show with few of the drawbacks. They are a creative medium through which you can continually examine and reexamine the stories and interactions of a select number of fictional characters. In other words, webisodes surpass films in their capacity for emotional and creative depth simply by offering the possibility to emotionally text and explore your characters an infinite number of times rather than once for a two-hour block of time. Unlike a television series however, webisodes are unconstrained by pesky running times (they can be 3-5 minutes rather than 23), and censorship.

Webisodes are also a great medium through which to explore and learn about theories of marketing practices. Television shows have the benefit of entire firms solely devoted to promoting their success. With webisodes, you are forced to be your own promoter, and to successfully deal with internet-based advertisers should the serial become widely viewed. It is a wonderful discipline because it is a creative venture steeped very deeply in economic/marketing principles.

Webisodes are an interesting creature. You have to create characters that are entertaining in only five minutes, yet who will have enough creative life to be sustained over a long overall period of time. They have to leave the viewers wanting more, but never unsatisfied. It is a difficult balance to strike, one which poses significant challenges in writing, editing, and performance. I want to discover firsthand, precisely how an artist might go about creating such characters, and such environments.

Yet, I am also determine as to how a businessman might promote such an endeavor, how he might sustain it financially through advertising contracts and the like. There can be much creativity not only in art, but in business as well, with webisodes standing firmly as a glaring “case in point.”

In the creation of these webisodes, I want to help my viewers understand how this mode of serialized storytelling is created and popularized. By keeping a firsthand-account-via-blog of the entire creative/fiscal/economic process of creating a webisode series, I will be providing a valuable instruction manual not only for creative artists but for intellectual and technological theorists as well. How are such art forms created? What are their benefits and drawbacks? How are they sustained and popularized? And what does their failure or success mean for the future of film and television as creative/fiscally successful mediums? I have no idea… yet. But, I do intend to find out.

WEEK FOUR Assignment

Take a stab at stating your topic (don't worry, it will grow and change):
Step 1: Name your topic
I am trying to learn about (working on writing about studying).___________

Step 2: Add a question
Because I want to find out who/when/where/whether/why/how

Step 3: Motivate your question
In order to help my reader understand how or whether or why _____________

Check out earlier posts (last Feb) from last semester's class for examples.