The Major Research Paper and Project will serve as the primary grade for this class. The purpose of this paper is to help you plan how you will use social media as part of your work in public relations after graduation. As such the topic of your paper should be the use of social media in the field in which you plan to seek employment, or at least a field that you believe would be related to the work you plan to do.

We will work on this assignment throughout the semester, but the actual work is individual; no joint projects are allowed. Though some topics may overlap, they should each be unique in some way. The professor will work with you over the course of the semester to assure that the research and work remains on topic.

There are two parts to this assignment: a Research Paper and a Project. The Research Paper should examine the use of social media in a particular field, to be agreed upon with the professor. You should focus not on a particular brand or venue so much as a broader field, examining best practices, the types of social media used, and focusing on the most recent research and observations in those fields. Your sources should include a mix of peer-reviewed journals and current information from magazines, newspapers, web sites, etc.