About My Term Research Paper

I was really excited to write my research paper becasue it is on a very popular issue in technology and new media. My research topic is on "Cybercrime" and how it affects social networking and interaction online. I chose this topic becasue I hear a lot of my friends are dealing with annoying and threatening cybercrimes such as spammers and hackers. The breach of privacy on social networking websites is a huge issue becasue it is ambiguous in who to blame for cybercrimes committed- is it the companies, the government or even ourselves?

I began my research by going to the Baruch Library and speaking with a librarian whom has a specialty in research. After discussing my topic with her she pointed out several resources I can use in order to gather more information about this topic. I used the library databases in order to find journal articles and reports on my topics.

Through my research I was able to find, to my surprise, that child predation is not the top crime online. The top cybercrimes actually have to do with phishing, identity theft, and spamming. Before I did the research I thought the top cybercrimes related to social networking would include bullying and sexual harassment but surprisingly it has to do more with spam and phishing.

Some of the conclusions I found were that there are a lot of security issues that both governments and financial institutions are dealing with as people become more tech-savvy and use the Internet for activities such as shopping and applying for jobs. Recently, some hackers were even able to hack into the US government's software, which makes it very scary for the average person out there to think that even the government is vulnerable.

I think my paper is a major contribution to New Media research becasue it outlines the future of cybercrime- an activity that affects us all. Moreover, it is ever-growing as hackers become smarter in how they break security codes and scam people. It is an issue of utmost importance seeing as it can harm a person's finances, job, social interactions and even overall safety.