HW 6: Interest Statement

For the Semester-Long Research Project, the social computing technologies that I am most interested in are chat rooms, texting, instant messaging, and social networking services. I am interested in these forms of social computing because I, as long with the majority of students my age, commonly use these forms of technology on a day-to-day basis. Instant messaging and texting has grown so large that even my mother has a screen name, and my father now texts! The kinds of empowerment of marginalized groups that I am most interested in are overcoming sexism, overcoming ageism, and overcoming racism. I am interested in these topics because I find them to still be a problem in our society. I am currently taking an Intro to Women's Studies class which discusses the inequalities based on gender, and I have become very interested and concerned with the fact that women are still not receiving the same forms of "treatment" that men are receiving. The geographical ares that I am interested in are North America and the US because I believe that the forms of social computing that I have interest in are most commonly used in these areas of the world. I look forward to further studying these topics!