Nerd Project

Todo

• Lit review
• Structure
• Research

Abstract/Introduction/Background

Since the rise of the microcomputer revolution over the last few decades a new genre of identity has been formed in the fabric of our society. This identity is that of "the nerd". Movies such as Revenge of the Nerds, and TV shows such as Family Matters and Saved by the Bell have all used this social identity to model characters and story plots.

Researchers such as De Oca have published research on other social identities such as the "The Male Consumer as Loser" and have traced the etiology of this identity to the rise of the Superbowl, Sports Illustrated, and the connected marketing campaigns of alcohol companies.

The research of de Oca & Messner (2005) begs the questions, did the media shape the social identities of the individuals who could currently be stereotyped as "the male consumer-loser" or was this social identity a natural evolution brought about by other psycho-social causal factors that the advertising simply utilized to sell a product? To discover definitively what were the causal factors that led to the social perception of the existence of "nerds" is not necessarily the scope of this project. The scope of this project is to definitively discover the possible causal historical correlates coincide with the rise of the "nerd" identity, and what the possible causes and implications of this identity are.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/427523&erFrom=-6095881577244496859Guest

Bibliography

Messner, M.A. & de Oca J.M. (2005) The Male consumer as loser: Beer and liquor ads in mega sports media events. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30, 1879–1909.

Connected Wikipedia Articles

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Urkel
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_Of_The_Nerds
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dustin_Diamond#Screech_from_Saved_by_the_Bell
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Messner

Possibly Informative Material

• http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1578