Académique Documents
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Culture Documents
Professor P
English 102
24 February 2017
Thesis: I argue that social media is a double-edged sword, whereas it can be very beneficial to
oneself or a community but can also be the cause of harm to oneself or a community. The pros
and cons will be displayed to get a sense of how human interaction is shaped by social media.
Cravens, Jaclyn, et al. "Why I Stayed/Left: An Analysis of Voices of Intimate Partner Violence
on Social Media."Contemporary Family Therapy: An International Journal, vol. 37, no. 4, Dec.
2015, pp. 372-385. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10591-015-9360-8.
The central claim of this article is about intimate partner violence and why one
might stay in that relationship. The article looks at when Ray Rice beat his girlfriend and
many people took to the social media app Twitter and gave reasons to why they stayed in
their abusive relationship or why they left their abusive relationship. The article evidence
for the claim comes from a study where researchers analyzed over 600 tweets under
certain hash tags of #whyistayed and #whyileft, using the tweets they summarized
what factors convince one to continue a violent relationship and what factors convince
one to leave. The source is fairly credible considering it has three authors, multiple
2015, and fairly relevant to the topic of social media. There may be some bias based on
the fact that the studies and all the information was pulled from people's tweets on social
media which in turn are almost always biased and there is no way of knowing if the
person tweeting is telling the truth. This source is suitable for the report because it takes a
look on how people are using a social media device such as Twitter to share their story,
Dillman Carpentier, Francesca R., et al. "When First Comes Love (Or Lust): How Romantic and
Sexual Cues Bias First Impressions in Online Social Networking." Journal of Social Psychology,
vol. 154, no. 5, Sept. 2014, pp. 423-440. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00224545.2014.933158.
This source claims that we romantically perceive others differently through social
media than in person and that difference can make them seem more alluring or romantic.
They also argue that sexual cues perceived through social media may improve
positive qualities; or sexual cues through social media may make others view one as
stereotypical sex role or as a sex object, whereas people may only favor them if they
seem open to sexual advances, consensual or not. These claims are defended by
experiments the researchers carried out where people would be primed with a set of
qualities on some person's social media on LinkedIn and then they would give their
impression upon the people. The source is fairly credible because it is a peer-reviewed
source and contains three highly qualified authors; the source also contains credible
sources and is relevant to the topic. Also the article was written in 2014, therefore it is
timely. The source can contain some bias considering it is working mainly on the
opinions of what others view romantically, as every person is a mixed bag it can be
difficult to defend their findings, which are the opinions of people. The source is fairly
suitable for my topic considering the argument of this source is that people may perceive
others differently because of social media than they would have in a face-to-face
environment.
Fleck, Jesse and Leigh Johnson-Migalski. "The Impact of Social Media on Personal and
Professional Lives: An Adlerian Perspective." Journal of Individual Psychology, vol. 71, no. 2,
Summer2015, pp. 135-142. EBSCOhost,login.pallas2.tcl.sc.edu/login?
url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=103721598&site=ehost-
live.
This article makes claims of social medias positive and negative impacts on
health care. It makes these claims on the grounds of looking at real examples where
social media is improving professional and personal lives in the hospitals, and examples
where social media harms because of patients opinions of therapists, the breaching of
privacy, and the effect of social media adding unnecessary stress to a patient. The source
textbook called the Journal of Individual Psychology. The article was created in 2015 and
is relevant to my topic. The article may be somewhat biased because it was written by
doctors in the field of psychology and the examples of social media being
harmful/helpful is pull either from a personal account or a small pool. The information in
this source would be useful in my paper because it fairly neutrally describes the pros and
Galasso Bonanno, S. (2016). Social Medias Impact on Relationships. Psych Central. Retrieved
on February 27, 2017, from https://psychcentral.com/lib/social-medias-impact-on-relationships/
This article is about the emotional connect that one receives through social media.
The author claims that relationships through social media are valuable they do not have
the ability of providing one with the opportunities of deep emotional closeness. The claim
that relationships through social media are valuable is backed by studies that link social
support to positive mental health and the negative emotional impact of loneliness. The
source is somewhat credible, the author of the piece is a licensed psychologist so they
have authority on the topic but the article is published on a website, it says on the website
that the piece was peer-reviewed by another doctor, it does contain reliable sources and
was written in 2016. The article seems fairly biased whereas she stats facts but does not
back them up too much, she tends to state her information as rhetorical questions. The
source does contain some relevant information to my topic such as the claims of worth of
social media.
Patton, Desmond Upton, et al. "Sticks, Stones and Facebook Accounts: What Violence Outreach
Workers Know about Social Media and Urban-Based Gang Violence in Chicago." Computers in
Human Behavior, vol. 65, Dec. 2016, pp. 591-600. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.052.
The central claim of this article is that youths in violent neighborhoods are using
social media as a tool for bragging about violence, making threats, recruiting gang
members, and planning violent crimes. They believe the rise in shootings and violent
crimes in Chicago are due to cyber bullying or taunting online. They support their claim
by collecting a sample of youth violence outreach workers and had 17 interviews, with
those interviews they received stories/examples of where youths had used social media to
instigate a fight or had a relation to a violent crime. They also argue how youths are using
social media as a platform to portray an unrealistic identity to their peers; this is backed
source is fairly credible because it has four authors, multiple legitimate sources, and is
The article is relevant to the topic, it was written in 2016 so it is very timely, and it could
contain some bias considering they interviewed violent outreach workers which work
with troubled or gang youths which would not be the norm or average person which can
have an impact on the argument. This source is extremely suitable for my research paper;
it contains many personal stories and examples where social media had an impact on their
human interaction. It also contains good research and has a similar topic to my paper.
Pittman, Matthew and Brandon Reich. "Social Media and Loneliness: Why an Instagram Picture
May Be Worth More Than a Thousand Twitter Words." Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 62,
Sept. 2016, pp. 155-167. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2016.03.084.
This article claims that loneliness is rising in young adults but imaged-based
social media apps such as Instagram and Snapchat have the ability to alleviate loneliness
due to the enhanced intimacy they offer, while text-based applications such as Twitter
of little intimacy and hardly affect loneliness. This article defends this claim by
performing a study in which 253 students were to fill out a survey that asked how happy,
lonely, and how satisfied with life were they and which apps they used to where the
researchers gathered correlations between happiness and what apps used. The source is
Behavior, it contains credible sources and has two authors, it is also relevant to the topic
and was written in 2016. But it is fairly biased, although it backed up its study findings
with a lot of math and numbers the way they conducted their findings is hardly reliable,
they asked college students how happy they were and what social media apps they used,
there is two problems with that: college kids are normally somewhat stressed and almost
all college students use a large number of social media apps, so it is difficult to derive
which app made someone happy. The source would be okay to use in my research paper
because although the findings may not be trustworthy there are parts where data such as
Cooper,
Looks like you are working with a really fascinating topic. You do a good job summarizing these
sources and discussing their general positions on issues related to digital interactions. I would
like to see your focus narrow down quite a bit. It seems like youve cast a pretty wide net here,
which is fine in these preliminary stages, but there are topics of loneliness, dating, and violence
that dont really intersect that much aside from occurring in digital/online spaces. So consider
which of these lines of thinking is most appealing to you and focus your paper (your thesis) on
that line of thinking. The discussions on romantic relationships and online interaction seem to
have the most in common. Looking forward to seeing how this one shapes up.