Science Fair Proposal

1. What is your topic?
My topic is social media networking with an emphasis on viral journalism and communication. 


2. What is the driving problem behind your experiment and the quote by an expert to support that problem? (Expert citation must be MLA format.)
My driving problem with my topic is the level of censorship that, noticeably authoritarian or dictatorial governments, certain types of governments implement on their people. Rebecca MacKinnon, a CNN journalist as well as the cofounder of Global Voices online, supports this problem in a TED talk, 


Rebecca MacKinnon: Let's Take Back the Internet!" TED: Ideas worth Spreading. TED, July 2011. Web. 25 Sept. 2012. <http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_mackinnon_let_s_take_back_the_internet.html>.

Rebecca MacKinnon "Let's take back the internet!"

3. What is your hypothesis? (Must be in If-Then form.)

• If a country uses a model of government similar to an authoritarian type of government, then censorship will correspond with the level of that specific country's income.

• If a word is blacklisted on the Chinese's (insert censorship tool) system, then it is likely that it is censored in another country. 

4. Write a paragraph summary of how you will perform the experiment.  Include the tools you plan on using.

• To conduct my experiment, I will first and foremost compile a reputable list of sources as research to determine what the economic nature, type of government, and level of censorship a country has. Some of these sources will include stock market reports, GPD reports, major events in selected country's current history, and a list of keywords that can be provided by organizations (such as Human Rights Watch or eff.org) that are mostly blacklisted. After a compilation of this research, I must organize the research and data and create a universal unit to convert all the country's economic natures, governments, and censorship. Then finally, after collecting data and organizing it in understandable tables and charts, I will create a graph of the level of censorship a selected country uses throughout a span of selected years and economic income of that country (which will be determined at a later date.)   I will record and evaluate any results and use them for the  conclusion of the experiment. 
• To conduct my experiment, I will first and foremost compile a reputable list of sources as research to determine a list of the blacklisted keywords in China by using search engines such as Google, The Great Firewall,  or a Human Right Watch group. After creating a list of keywords, I will then research on the top eleven countries with the most censorship while researching on the top eleven countries with the least censorship. This information can be done by Google or Human Rights Watch. After compiling two separate lists, I will organize the data per country and compare the countries all together to create a graph. Then, I will create the top 20, 50, or 100 blacklisted words and conclude my project by creating statistical data through comparisons of each graph. 
• Tools: Google, The Great Firewall, Human Rights Watch, other human right's groups, excel, math, paper, pencils, computer, Mrs. Pittman, my brain. 

5. Select one of the following Project Categories for your experiment:
Mathematics & Computer Science

Blog 5a: Problem Statemoent

Topic: the Social Media Revolution

Problem 1: Social Media Networking can be censored in certain countries in effort to oppress and control the population. (How can we create pathways through the internet to bypass these censorship efforts of a country?)

•     Once I solve the problem, I will continue my focus on understanding the internet and how to go through the loopholes in effort to give people social media networking in some form to be able to connect with one another. I envision establishing a community of networks maybe through the tor project, a specialized website to ensure anonymity to its users, to provide services in these contained countries. I want to focus my effort in the Middle East or specific Asian countries because of the current internal crisis going on. By emphasizing on these areas in my problem when researching social media revolutionary techniques, I can use the product of my problem to give back to the people to communicate, organize, and become active in their countries.

Problem 2: There are ethnical issues when it comes Social Media networking because of the current policies with media giants (like facebook, tumblr, etc.) regarding privacy. Contrast to the aforementioned problem that deals with censorship, a problem with social media networking is it provides little protection to individuals or groups online.

•    Once I solve the problem, I will purpose to networking giants my solution that will protect privacy more while making both parties of the internet privacy happy. Privacy is a huge issue when it comes to anything online, regardless if it is a social media network or not. There is a saying that once something goes on the internet, it stays on the internet forever. Not only is your privacy online threaten, there are more and more cases where cops in America can request your entire FaceBook activity.