Essay 8

Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA

SOCIAL MEDIA 3

Smarthinking Tutor Response Form

Your tutor has written overview comments about your essay in the form below. Your tutor has also embedded comments [in bold and in brackets] within your essay. Thank you for choosing Smarthinking to help you improve your writing!

Hello, Mara! I am Jaira B., and I look forward to working with you on this Essay Center Review to improve your writing today. Let's get started!

*Writing Strength:  I commend you for explaining how you will use the intellectual standards in investigating your topic. Because you indicate that you will elaborate on your points, express the points in different ways, give illustrations, and also follow-up every argument with an example, your readers will be convinced that the outcome of your outline will be a well-written paper. Good job, Mara!

*Mara, you requested help with Main Idea/Thesis:    Your scope is too general, Mara. Allow me to illustrate what I mean:

The effects will be outlined and critically analyzed. After showing social media effects on the society, the paper will dissect its thesis statement “give rationale on whether social media is a positive or negative influence on my children and me.”

As I noticed, your topic is about the effects of social media on children and adults. While you’ve chosen your target group for your study, you do not specify what aspect of children and adults you will focus on. As a result, your readers might think that your scope is too vague. Social media platforms have different effects on children and adults in many aspects such as physical, mental, emotional, psychological, political, cultural, and social. At this point, there have been many studies conducted on these aspects that a simple declaration of your scope will have multiple impressions. Therefore, you need to narrow your study. Which aspect are you going to focus on? Why do you want to focus on the effects of social media platforms on children? Answering these questions will help you be more specific in your scope.

*Mara, you requested help with Content Development:    Consider specifying the affects you are going to focus on to provide a clearer overview of your essay’s content. Let’s examine your current thesis statement:

However, social media has both negative and positive effects on adults and children.

Although you state you state that you are going to focus on both the negative and positive effects of social media, this might not be enough to reflect the main idea of your essay. Remember, you are trying to investigate an issue. Therefore, I suggest you indicate the effects you are going to discuss, and you can do this by indicating the benefits and dangers of social media. Consider the sample revision I made below:

However, social media has both negative which are ____________________________, _____________________________, and ___________________________, and positive effects which are _________________________________________, ___________________________________, and ___________________________ on adults and children.

Filling in the blanks with the effects of social media will help you be more specific. Grammar & Mechanics  Some of the pronouns you use to refer to nouns are vague, Mara. As a result, your readers might get confused with your sentences. Here is an example:

Understanding the history of social media will provide a foundation for understanding how it changed societal aspects.

The underlined pronoun is vague because it can refer to the history or the understanding. To resolve this, you can either replace the pronoun with the noun you are originally referring to, or use pronouns that agree with the nouns in number. Let’s take a look at the examples below:

Replace the pronoun with a noun: Since the restaurant will be offering Korean cuisine, its walls and tables will be decorated with Korean artworks and images of favorite dishes that enhance the restaurant’s level of aesthetics.

Use pronouns that agree with the nouns in number: Since the restaurant will be offering Korean cuisine, its walls and tables will be decorated with Korean artworks and images of favorite dishes that enhance their level of aesthetics.

In the first example, I replaced the pronoun its with the restaurant’s to make the sentence clearer. In the second example, I used the pronoun their to refer to the Korean artworks, which makes the sentence clearer as well. Which of the two revisions fits your purpose? Check your draft again to see if there are other vague pronouns. Summary of Next Steps: 

· Be more specific in your scope.  

· Indicate the effects of social media.  

· Avoid vague pronouns.

Thank you for submitting your essay for a review, Mara. I enjoyed helping you with this step in the revision process. Have a good day! ~Jaira B.

You can find more information about writing, grammar, and usage in the Smarthinking Writer's Handbook.

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Please look for comments [in bold and in brackets] in your essay below. Thank you for submitting your work to Smarthinking! We hope to see you again soon.

Feedback from instructor

Good start here, but the approach is too general and lacks focus. See the lectures for weeks 3 and 4 on how to structure specific premises that support a much more focused thesis claim. Make sure that your main points are supported by peer reviewed research using in text citations. Clarify your understanding of peer reviewed sources. You should have at least 4 at this stage and you have two. The Harvard Business Review is a media source, and not a peer reviewed source, but it is great to explore more in-depth research from the writers in that magazine. Credible research is what drives critical thinking.

Carefully note the requirements of the final project. Although you will give an overview of your thesis and reasoning, the final essay will also take into account how you are applying the critical thinking tools and how your research is enlarging your ideas. In this sense, our project is different from a standard ‘term paper’. You have a great handle on this already.

Effects of Social Media Outline

Mara C.

Introduction to Critical Thinking – Humanities 101

CSU

Dr. Ancheza

July 11, 2020

Advances in technology have brought rise to new ways through which human beings interact. Today, social media and the internet improved and destroyed human perspectives. People can interact within seconds regardless of their position in the world. However, social media has both negative and positive effects on adults and children. This paper is an outline for research on the impact of social media on society. The outline gives the main points and sub-points, as discussed in the final paper.

Main points and sub-points

· Introduction

· Definition and history of social media

· Effects of social media on society

· Individual impacts of social media [Consider being more elaborate on your outline. Include sub-topics under your topics. What are the individual effects of social media?]

· Conclusion and recommendations

· References

The paper focuses on social media and its effects on society. Specifically, the paper gives a rationale on whether social media is a positive or negative influence on my children and me. The paper will first investigate how social media was innovated, including the different aspects of social media. The section will give details about its history with a comparison of the state of affairs before social media. Understanding the history of social media will provide a foundation for understanding how it changed societal aspects. The paper will critically examine the general effects on society. This is imperative since it will offer guidance to focus on the thesis statement. Social media has both positive and negative impacts on society. The effects will be outlined and critically analyzed. After showing social media effects on the society, the paper will dissect its thesis statement “give rationale on whether social media is a positive or negative influence on my children and me.” At this point, the paper will specify social media effects to my children and I. [Since this is an academic paper, your research should also contribute to the broader audience. I suggest indicating that your focus is on the effects on children and adults and not just you and your children.] It will list all facts and then give a concluding statement with rationale on whether the effects are positive or negative.

Intellectual standards will be extensively applied to investigate the thesis statement critically. The issue will be critical reasons to provide a rationale for my position. I will phrase questions to probe in-depth analysis and stir critical thinking. Intellectual standards will be applied to instigate better reasoning. I will elaborate on my points, express the points in different ways, give illustrations, and also follow-up every argument with an example. The standards will be in line with Paul and Elder (2010). Clear points will determine the accuracy, dependency, and relevance of each point. It is, therefore, important to have clarity. To improve clarity, I will review literature from reliable sources and elaborate its application to my point of view. Sourced literature will be clear, well-illustrated, and referenced to improve accuracy.

Every research question makes several assumptions. The paper will assume that social media effects on society are consistent. Since I will not investigate the impact of social media on every member of the society, the results will be generalized. This might result in skewed results since experiences might range from one individual to the other. I will rely on existing literature instead of doing surveys, thus making my results subject to the author’s personal opinions. Being confined within a specific portion of the society will block me from critically looking into this issue. [Being more specific will not confine you to a specific portion of society, Mara. In fact, it will help you be more directed and freer from vague implications. Therefore, I encourage you to be more specific.] I will also be limiting my discussion to social media, although the topic would be given weight by including the effects of the internet. In general, social media and the internet similarly affect individuals making them inter-related. Narrowing my argument to social media will limit my discussion, thus skewing my critical thinking.

References

Daniel Miller, E. C., Haynes, N., McDonald, T., Nicolescu, R., & Sinanan, J. (2016). How the World Changed Social Media. London: UCL Press.

Diane, S. (2017). Evaluation Tools to Appraise Social Media and Mobile Applications. Informatics, 1-8.

Holt, D. (2016). Branding in the age of social media. Harvard business review, 560-569.