Hi! I’m back from a short hiatus. The good news is I am in my last semester of graduate school at Pace University and will graduate with a Masters Degree in Media and Communication Arts this May.
From now through the spring, this blog will be the public face of my master’s thesis, through which I will examine this thesis statement “Social media and online presence are a growing source of domestic adoption matches in the United States.”
I am delighted and thankful that my program director agreed to allow me to do a blog in lieu of a traditional thesis that would be unlikely to be read by more than a handful of people. I am also grateful for guidance from my adviser, Professor Andrew Revkin, who possesses a tremendous amount of experience in writing and blogging, as well as in the environment. I’ll be the second Pace University graduate student to do a blog as a thesis project. (The first was Eunice Roque’s 2012 blog on women’s issues related to the Arab Spring .)
In years past, newspaper ads and networking were the only ways for hopeful adoptive parents to be matched with an adoption situation. The rise of social media, the Internet and related technologies has changed the way hopeful adoptive parents connect with potential birth mothers. Whether a couple is pursuing adoption through an agency or independently, Internet presence is a vital part of the process. Through a literature review, independent online study, interviews and an online survey, the research will explore how new communication tools have affected domestic adoption efforts. Unlike traditional projects, this research will be shared publicly on this blog to maximize interactions with those engaged in adoption efforts and analysis.
Why am I doing this? I have a personal interest in adoption, particularly independent adoption. I also have a great personal interest in communication. The rapid growth and evolution of online communication tools, from Facebook and Twitter to blogs and YouTube, have outpaced our understanding of the impact in areas like adoption. My research will clarify how the adoption landscape is changing. The information and research presented in my blog will help many people who are hoping to adopt a baby. It will allow them to make decisions about how best to spend their money on outreach to a potential birth mother. In some cases, the data I present may actually expedite their adoption journey and result in them adopting a baby sooner than they would have, had they not been able to read my research. Social media and the Internet are changing many facets of society, and adoption is one of them.
While a voluminous body of research has examined the evolution of online commerce and business, there appears to be little scholarship so far on the impact of social networks and other Internet communication on adoption. A Google Scholar search for key terms comes up rather empty, in fact. The time is ripe for this study.
The data for this project will be collected through interviews with adoption attorneys, hopeful adoptive parents, birth parents, and those who have recently adopted babies from within the United States, as well as others in the adoption community. I will also be including data from at least one Qualtrics survey I plan on conducting online. In addition, there will be references to supporting published information on this topic.
My hope is to discern trends and convey examples that support my thesis statement — that social media and online presence are a growing source of matches in domestic adoptions. I am looking for evidence and supporting data that shows which methods of communication are responsible for matches in domestic adoption.
I’m excited about my research and will be asking you, my readers, for input. My goal is to help people who are in the process of adopting domestically decide how to best spend their money, time and resources when planning their adoption outreach.
Please visit my blog often over the next four months, share my posts with others and weigh in!
Searching for Juno 