Writing Studies Research

There are many types of writing studies research that I find to be interesting; from how writing works in a retail setting to how writing has changed because of social media websites for example; Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. Last semester I did an analysis on my place of employment, Target, and how writing is used to benefit the company. As an employee I did not realize how important these aspects of the job were but after doing my observation and conducting my research I now understand the significance of this writing and now when I go to work I use these aspects of writing that I learned during this project to better myself during the job.

This time around I plan on taking a different approach. I always found interesting how social media websites influenced writing of today's generation. As an avid user of these websites I find myself wanting to write in slag while doing a college paper because that is how I am used to writing. However, I feel that aspects of Twitter have actually helped me when it came to school work. With the limit of 140 characters in a tweet it teaches you how to make a complete thought in a short amount of space thus minimizing run-on sentences. Despite what I said about wanting to use slag in my school essays I found that by having Facebook and Myspace it has caused me to be more creative in my writing. I find it easier to come up with ideas in my writing whether it is something I am interested in or not. 

In my research I want to find out how other people perceive these social media's and how it has helped/hurt them during their academic careers. I think it would also be interesting to find out if people use these social media sites to help them conduct some type of research. For example; I have used Facebook to get opinions from other people asking if cell phones should be allowed in public schools and received good feedback that helped me during my project.