Let's try this again.

Taking a stab at this again, because I was a bit, erm, vague in the first attempt:

For my final paper, I want to take a look at the digital divide w/r/t gender and access, specifically being female and how this may or may not impact one's use and access (and perhaps gender dominance) of digital and social media.

An article I found recently asks, essentially, do ladies dominate Twitter? And the blog writeup that accompanied the link argued, "No, they don't. But they dominate other sites." How is this so? And how, exactly, is this accounted for? If not Twitter, where do women dominate? What about ChatRoulette? It's a social medium (ladies!) with a gambling- and voyeur-type preface (dudes!), so who are you most likely to "next" upon? Early statistics show it's more likely to be a guy, but why?

Do societal expectations of domesticity hurt or help women in the digital divide? Does it depend on the area of technology that determines how adept (or inept) women may be? Does it depend on cultural values and where they live? Do women see less of a divide in social media, but more of a divide when it comes to video games or programming? If so, why? Where do forums, generally social in nature but more text based in execution, fall along the social media spectrum, and does this affect how many users are of the female persuasion?

These are all topics that I hope to address in my paper, and perhaps a few more that I haven't touched on that may come to me in a "Eureka"-type moment.

I anticipate that research on ChatRoulette will be sparse because of how new it is, but I also imagine that what I do find with be pretty helpful in the long run. Though limited in number, amounts of data and reports I've seen so far seem to be surprisingly in depth.

Suggestions? Tips? Questions I maybe haven't considered that I should? Leave it in the comments.

Feminism and games: A paper topic (or, My black and blue pony)

Sorry for spacing the Friday at 5 p.m. goal. I even had my topic picked out! I was just busy getting ready for a weekend at Emerald City Comic Con, which was sadly a bust because I didn't get to see Stan Lee OR Leonard Nimoy. But I got a neat shirt and some cool prints out of it, so it wasn't so bad.

But more on to the topic: what is my paper topic? I've decided to revisit a subject I wrote about for a 500-level class last semester: video games and gender. I enjoyed this topic quite a bit, and feel like I may even have some new views to throw into my paper blender thanks to another semester of theory education. I have new material (thanks, FF13 and Bayonetta!) to use, new studies to pull from, and new lessons on a "feministic" approach to digital media with respect to video games.

I'll probably end up pulling from my original paper (but not the entire thing, because that's academic dishonesty right there) and using The Big Pink Reader, as well as a couple of other books I have scattered around my house, for my academic sources.

Moreover, this topic will be a challenge to address again because it has been such a short period of time between papers. But I also remember finding great new studies literally the same day I'd turned in my paper and being so frustrated that I couldn't include that data, and also feeling like I hit the page limit on that term paper before I'd even really begun to get into my arguments. I may have some material I'll be able to sweep up from the cutting room floor, polish up and present as new-new.

We'll see how it goes. I may even end up trashing the original topic and going for race and video games, which should present a fantastic challenge thanks to my Wonderbread upbringing and, thus, perspective on games.

SHOULD BE EXCITING. I can't wait to start writing this the weekend before my presentation! (I won't, really, but procrastination is how I roll more often than not.)

Happy spring break, digital savants!