Thesis Statements and Social Media's Influence on Identity

In class today, we will be looking again at how to contract thesis statements, but first I wanted to offer up 2 news articles (one on Twitter, one of Instagram) to help supplement your essay writing, if need be. Feel free to find your own article as well, but make sure you 1) correctly cite it in your essay AND on the works cited page and 2) that is is a legitimate news or academic source. If you would like to search for your own, I recommend searching through Time.com, Slate.com, The Wallstreet Journal, The New York Times, or another well known news source. 

In addition to the "Focus on Facebook" PDF posted on Canvas, here are a couple articles that might give you some more insight into how social media and identity work together:

"How Twitter Took over My Identity" (Wall Street Journal article)

"Why Instagram is even more Depressing than Facebook" (Slate article)

Now, on to thesis statements!

Constructing a thesis statement is not a matter of taking a position, but rather think of your thesis as an idea that you are testing through analysis of evidence as a way to get your reader to think along with you as you write. As we have said before, this about your analytical essay assignment as one simple question-- how does social media impact identity? 

You can take the stance of social media making a positive impact, a negative impact, an inaccurate representation, an accurate representation-- it is up to you which direction you want to take your thought process is, so don't be afraid to say something controversial about social media and identity if you have that opinion. 

You can think about whether or not social media accurately represents the identity of a person OR you can think about how social media builds the identity of an individual, brand, band, company, etc. through pictures, updates, comments, etc. Also think about the PURPOSE of the platform you are working with in general (what is Facebook normally used for? What is Twitter used for?) as well as the PURPOSE of the particular account you are analyzing-- is it to sell a product or advertise an idea? Give information about a particular topic? Represent a particular public figure in a certain way? Is it just a personal expression of that individual's life? A combination of all these things? Thinking about the purpose of social media is a great place to start your analysis!

So right now, you have some sort of idea of how you think social media might impact identity, how a particular social platforms functions and what your account’s general “identity” is, but you need to gather evidence and data before you begin writing, so using heuristics to break down and make sense of the data available is crucial. 

Your main goal today should be to find an idea to shape your paper around! Think about your thesis statement as a hypothesis for what you think will happen and your analysis as the experiment—at the end of the writing “experiment,” you may find that your thesis needs to change to reflect the work you have done.

Your thesis should not be a claim that does not need proving (AKA "Gus Malzhan’s twitter feed builds his identity as Auburn’s head football coach")—you should look for ideas below the surface, a more in depth look at his “identity” through social media. 

In short, your thesis should make your audience WANT to read you paper and think along with you as you explore this topic in order to see how  you have arrived at this idea instead of immediately and completely agreeing with you from the very first paragraph. Why else are you writing an essay about social media? You are writing to help your audience better understand the idea behind the phenomenon of social media.