Fisk-Memo38

First, and most obviously, I hope to engage the academic community with my work. More specifically, I hope that my work will enter into ongoing discussions of the construction of crime and deviance, in addition to discussions of moral panic. I hope to draw this audience by reformulating the moral panic framework to include post-structuralist concepts. Additionally, I have come to understand that one of my primary struggles will be finding a balance between post-structuralist critique and developing work which can inform policy decisions within dominant discourses, and I imagine that if I succeed in doing so, the result will be of some interest to STS scholars.

Secondly, I would hope that parents and educators find some value in my work. It seems to me that members of both groups tend to complain about “not getting” the social networking technologies popular today. While I find this unproblematic – indeed, I “don't get” twittering myself – the fact that those who are charged with “protecting” children online fail to understand how these activities make sense within youth culture is a different story. So, I hope that my work will help to further illustrate how these technologies make sense to youth, while they might not always make sense to parents and teachers.

Finally, I would like my work to be of some use to policy makers. I imagine that my work would be of interest largely for the same reasons it would be of interest for parents and teachers, however, I would imagine that my work would provide at least some level of information on the agenda setting process.