English 1100 Analysis: On Social Media Article

Essay Instructions:

English 1100 / Dr. Carrie Spell

ANALYSIS ESSAY

Due Dates—
Partial Draft (2 body paragraphs): T, 10/17
Partial Draft (3 pages): Th, 10/19
Final Version: Tuesday, 10/24 by 20 minutes before class
Length: 4-5 pages, plus a work cited page including at least one source

Purpose: You will enhance your critical reading strategies and learn to read, analyze, and evaluate the effectiveness of an argument.

Preparation: Find an article from a credible online source that offers a persuasive stance on the same issue you researched for the Informational Essay. (Note: do not choose an informational article. The article should take a clear position.) You will read the article, taking careful notes on the techniques that the writer uses to reach his or her audience.

What to do: Write your essay for an academic audience who has already read the article. Your essay should perform a focused analysis of the writing, drawing a conclusion about how the author uses rhetoric to shape understanding of the topic and why that should matter to your audience.

*Note, this essay is not asking you to make your own argument on this issue. This assignment asks you to analyze someone else’s argument.

Focus: You should have a clear and specific focus here, one that is persuasive and analytical. A good focus will be original and creative, showing a strong critical understanding of how the essay works. Stay away from a general “laundry list” in which you simply list all of the rhetorical techniques that a writer uses. Everything that you discuss in the essay should be tied together in a meaningful way.

AVOID THIS KIND OF BROAD FOCUS:
In his New York Times article “The Westernization of the U.N.,” John D. Oran uses ethos, pathos, and logos to make his point that the U.N. is biased in favor of the West, but he also has many problems including his use of the begging the question fallacy.

AIM FOR SOMETHING NARROW, LIKE THIS:
In “Madonna's Adoption in Malawi May Lead Others to Africa,” Gabrielle Birkner uses emotional language and detailed stories to make us understand the plight of families in Malawi. But her account of how Africans are exploited ultimately paints a very simple picture of wealthy Americans and reduces a complex topic to a typical rich vs. poor narrative.

Development: Your introduction should set up your main point and anything we need to understand about the criteria you’ve used to evaluate the article. Carry out your analysis in the body. Make sure you are referring to specific detail from the work, using and analyzing quotations to support your argument. Because you’ll be writing for an academic audience that has read the work in question, avoid extensive summary unless you are analyzing the significance of those details. Conclude your essay by pointing toward additional research and analysis that can be done to better understand the issue as part of an ongoing conversation.

Style: You should be writing in a style suitable for an academic audience, so aim for sophisticated sentence structures and elevated diction, including strong verb choices.

Conventions: Follow MLA Format for this essay, making sure to cite sources correctly. Include a title that reflects the spirit and scope of the essay. Use 12 point Times New Roman or Garamond typeface or 10 point Calibri or Georgia typeface. Keep your essay consistently double-spaced; turn off the Word feature that adds extra space between paragraphs.

Final Version Grading: A rubric is below. Late final versions of the essay will lose 10 points per day for each day they are late. Essays submitted on the due date but after class time will lose 5 points.

Essay Sample Content Preview:

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Social Media Article Analysis
The author of the article, The Impact of Social Media on Interpersonal Communication Patterns, Velga Vevere, begins his article by a quote by philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. “Anonymity in our age has a far more pregnant significance than is perhaps realized; it has an almost epigrammatic significance. Not only do people write anonymously, but they write anonymously over their signature, yes, even speak anonymously”CITATION Vel15 \p "P. 125" \l 1033 (Velga P. 125). Velga uses the opening statement to draw his audience to what he is going to talk about in the article, the impact of social media on communication. The introductory statement also informs the leader that the writer is going to emphasize on three main areas that social media influences on; how we write, and how people speak.
One of the things that can be noted about the article is that it uses the views of the various philosophers towards communication as a basis to make his argument. After referring to the different philosophers and highlighting what they said about communication, the author decides to use the view of philosopher Soren Kierkegaard about communication. In analyzing social media and its effects on an individual, the author explains that when you are a public figure, members of the public will always attack you including the members of the press. The above statement relates to the opening statement where the writer associates social media to the issue of anonymity. Most of the people who use social media platforms always want to become anonymous so that they cannot be easily identified in case they make negative comments about someone on their social media accounts. Velga also uses the instance of Kierkegaard as an illustration when he was under regular attack by the members of the press, but he appeared to be unconcerned about the issue. You can also realize that Velga has used the instance of Kierkegaard to illustrate how an attack on social media is not something that one can say is new or just arose the other day. As such, the author helps the reader to develop reflection while going through the article so that he/ she can relate the influence of social media in their daily lives.
Velga also points out how social media has affected the communication patterns among the students in various schools. In a survey that they conducted, they realized that the students acknowledged that social media was influencing their lives in one way or the other especially about their classworkCITATION Vel15 \p "P. 131" \l 1033 (Velga P. 131). The author also argues that text speak is one of the things that became widespread over a long period before the new communication patterns which refers to social media. By referring to ...

Updated on January 26, 2024

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English 1100 Analysis: On Social Media Article

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