Progress

A long and busy semester has ended and my nights and weekends that were once filled with Health Communication and The Future of News will now be dominated by research in Second Life.

Initially my project on Second Life and social support groups was just going to be a literature review for my Health Communication Class. It evolved from there into a thesis topic and an independent summer research project.

Over the summer I will be working with my adviser to collect all of my data (by sitting in on support groups in Second Life and doing 1x1 interviews people who go to support groups in SL) and then writing the paper with the hopes of getting it into the Eastern Communication Association this fall and ultimately into a journal.

The big news, while at ECA my adviser spoke with another professor about work she had previously published and told her that we were using it in our research. They discussed the research I was going to be doing this summer and she was interested in it and ultimately wants to work on the project with us. It is very exciting for me!! We had a conference call a couple of weeks ago that went very well and I think that she will be able to bring more of the social support side of things into the equation that my adviser and I don't as much about.

Overall, VERY exciting!!