Social Media Platform/Website

You will overview and analyze an online social media platform/website (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr,Vine, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, etc...). You should cover the history, adoption and growth of the social network.

This will require you to research popular press articles such as newspapers, magazines, trade publications and maybe some scholarly articles pertaining to particular social network sites. Special attention should be paid to any geographic and demographic aspects of user adoption.

After reviewing the establishment and growth of the social media platform/website, you should also cover the forms of interaction on the site, novel features, and what differentiates it in the marketplace of social media.

Here you should use specific topics, theories, and issues discussed in class to analyze how the social interaction and communication are facilitated, encouraged, and maintained. You need to analyze how the social media platform fits into social media communication plans and audits.

In other words, how can the platform be utilized by groups and organizations to connect with audiences. Also, what types of measurements can an organization uses to determine how well the platform is working to promote campaigns and messages.

Tips on Process of Writing the Paper

• As much as possible, investigate your topic in relationship to Internet technology. This will reduce your need for conducting a bigger review of literature review. Some communication topics will have more research done related to technology than others.

• After you have researched your topic such as third places, data analytics, user experience design, online public relations, online content creation and management, social presence, or flow, you should write up a draft of the important relevant points on your topic.

• You next step should be to identify how each area related to the Internet as a communication technology.

• As you get more specific, you need to end up analyzing how your topic relates to online communication.

• Take your topical concepts and connect them to online communication by providing examples from websites and/or statistics from reports like the materials produced by The Pew Internet & American Life Project.