Melissa Cheater is a fourth year student in the Media & Public Interest stream of UWO’s Media, Information & Technoculture program. 

Prior to her studies at the UWO, she was involved in a variety of action community research projects in the former town of Hespeler, Ontario.  She researched, designed and developed a historical CD-ROM The History of Hespeler, for the Company of Neighbours, and assisted in the research behind the historical publication Portrait of an Ontario Town, published by The Company of Neighbours.  Melissa conducted further research with the YMCA and the Cambridge Steering Committee on Youth, on another Trillium funded research project focused on youth services in the Cambridge community.  She pioneered the youth-run not-for-profit organization the Hespeler Teen Music Society, which produces monthly youth music programming in the old downtown.

Melissa will be completing her honours B.A. in April 2006.  Her undergraduate research at UWO has included papers on representation of youth & youth culture; media distortion of homelessness: the Matrix of street living; vampires & those who slay them; the political economy of Canadian Media; Healthy Community strategies; nudity and victimization in crime/law television; characterization of violent women; local media; and radical alternative media.  She hopes to focus her final year of study towards online representation/virtual avatars, and the consequences of face-interface-face communication and its established role in new media cultures.  She hopes to explore online community tools, personal representation, and the selective (or unselected) disclosure of personal information during her work with the AnonEquity project.

Research

Under the supervision of Dr. Jacquelyn Burkell, Melissa is gathering data on privacy policies and children’s websites, as well as qualitative research on anonymity and technology.