A Social Media Research Paper – Expect at Least One of These
A Social Media Research Paper – Expect at Least One of These
Social media has touched the lives of 2.1 billion people. That’s how many people in the world have at least one social media account. With these kinds of statistics, a student can expect to have one or more social media research paper assignment while in college. This phenomenon has touched the content fields of business/marketing, sociology, psychology and political science and impacts people’s lives in huge ways. The positive and negative effects of the rise of social media have now also become the topics of a large body of research, and, as well, assignments for essays and papers. Here are some research paper topics for students in a variety of courses.
Business/Marketing
Now that people use the Internet for product and service searches, as well as to actually purchase those products and services, the entire field of marketing has been upended. Businesses that do not have an Internet presence and that do not engage in advertising through social media are failing to target a huge consumer market that is basically online several times a day. And so, on college campuses all over the country, marketing curricula has changed, so that graduates are fully skills in how to use social media for businesses. Here are some relevant research paper topics for business/marketing students:
- Strategies for spreading a brand on social media
- The important of blogs for marketing
- Using the psychology of social media to promote products and services
- New trends in content marketing via social media
- How businesses use LinkedIn for marketing products and services
- How to capture and convert Millennials via social media marketing
- How to use social media campaigns to drive traffic to a business website and/or blog
- Managing social media in the workplace
Sociology/Psychology
There are so many social media platforms today – each appealing to different socio-economic demographics. Facebook is the “great equalizer,” LinkedIn is for career professionals; Pinterest attracts anyone from crafters, artists, musicians, and designers to businesses that want to reach out to any of these audiences; Twitter is used by regular people, celebrities, politicians and businesses to promote anything from a new restaurant to a candidate’s profile. While all of these positive benefits are acknowledged, there are certainly concerns from a sociological standpoint:
- How has social networking impacted interpersonal relationships?
- Does social media result in a more connected or disconnected society?
- What is social media addiction and what are the tragic consequences of it?
- Bullying and social media
- Social media and the lowering of behavioral expectations of society
- Contributions of social media to greater isolation of individuals from the real world
- Impact of social media on student academic performance
Political Science
Social media has grown so fast that lawmakers have been unable to grasp its full implications for our Constitution and state and federal laws. Here are some intriguing topics for research papers:
- How far does the guarantee of free speech go on social media?
- Can individuals be charge with hate crimes for their bad behavior on social media?
- What constitutes libel and slander on social media?
- What threats to privacy does social media constitute?
At this point, local, state, and federal governments have depended upon site owners to answer these questions. At some time in the future, however, the need for uniform laws regulating the use of social media will probably be necessary – this is an area of huge discussion right now.
Social media is here to stay. What it will “look” like even a few years from now, no one really knows. Students tasked with a social media research paper have almost unlimited options.
