Best Answer
Writing a critical analysis essay is a very specific type of academic writing that is similar to, but not the same as, other types of expository writing. You need to understand the specific requirements of writing analytical essays before you can use them to analyze any specific work, including the Emily Emerick article you have been asked to analyze.
We would start our analysis by discussing the type of article that she wrote. It is a research article. She gave a survey to 447 undergraduate students to try to gauge their social media usage and whether they believed that social media played an important role in their education. She also gauged their attitudes towards whether they found social media to be distracting.
In a critical analysis, we would carefully examine her targeted group. The students she surveyed all came from a college of fine arts and communications background, which might suggest that their attitudes towards social media would be different from other students. This would be an important point to include in any critical analysis.
We would also look at the specific questions in the survey. Oftentimes, researchers draw conclusions from survey questions that might not fully be supported by those questions. Does the survey actually ask for the opinions that Emerick says it does in her conclusion? If not, what logical leaps has she made between her measurement tool and the conclusions that has drawn? Are they supported by evidence?
Finally, though the survey results suggest that students believe social media can be distracting in a formal educational environment, the survey does not seem to differentiate between a professor’s use of social media and social media, in general. Do you believe this would make a difference in the conclusion? Would students feel differently about social media usage if it specifically addressed academic social media applications?
