Official Style used in Social Media Is To Reveal Credibility

For this critique, I have decided to examine the article for communication study, Facebook Self-Presentational Motives: Daily Effects on Social Anxiety and Interaction Success by Burke, Tricia J., and Erin K. Ruppel, published on 20 December 2014.  I find this article on the Murphy library resources online where I just clicked the communication link, my favorite field. I think the audiences could be those communication studies group people. They probably pay attention to online social communication study. The sphere of human activity of this case is online social communicator. Everyone’s utterance on his or her Facebook would affect anyone in his social circle by explicit communication and presentation; anything he posts would be seen by his social circle at the mean time influence his circle. The goal of the article is to trigger those who care about social communication to consider whether individuals’ social anxiety and interaction success are associated with their specific self-presentation motives and their social competence described on Facebook.

     Lets come to the first question: is it essential to open a welcoming paragraph in official style? The following is the mission statement from the first paragraph of the article:

       “Social networking sites such as Facebook have exploded in popularity over the last several years. In fact, Facebook had 727 million daily active users as of September 2013 (Facebook, 2013). Relative to face-to-face interaction, Facebook is a distinct forum for interpersonal interaction because individuals have the ability to carefully manage their self-presentation. Compared to the immediate nature of face-to-face interactions, the asynchronous nature of most online social networking site interactions (e.g., Facebook) allows people time to consider the ways in which they can strategically present desired images of themselves online and can edit their communication to achieve those self-presentational goals” (Walther, 2007RIDCIT0028).

      This passage, when run through the readability scale, resulted in a Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score of 28.50 and an average grade level of 14.10. The words are not overladen or complex, but it is described with jargon that may not easily be understood or took the place of simpler long words. The instance involves “the asynchronous nature of most online social networking site interactions”; the “asynchronous nature” could not be very easy for all audiences to understand, but works for the audiences who are interested in social problems. In this example, there are also uses of many strategies such as relative clause, participial phrase, prepositional phrases, noun substitute and subordinate sentences structures; these strategies make the article more organized with complex language use. This paragraph has given a very important significance to the audiences is that individual representation on online social networking would influence the goal of self-representation achievement; also the spheres of human activity is the people’s behavior of online social networking related to their real communication and goal. 

            I saw an example of relative clause in the third sentence, on the seventh line of text: “the asynchronous nature of most online social networking site interactions (e.g., Facebook) allows people time to consider the ways in which they can strategically present desired images of themselves.” In this sentence, the subject is long; the noun substitute play a part in the whole sentence that combine two independent sentences into one which make the whole sentence looks more professional and persuasive for the specific audience.  The subordination in the second sentence, on the fourth line of content: “because individuals have the ability to carefully manage their self-presentation.” The whole sentence followed the “ because” but used common words. In this sentence, the author uses ‘ because’ to connect the two part of this sentence which makes it has the causality.

       Also, prepositional phrases are easy to point out. For example, the first line of the quoted text reads, “Social networking sites such as Facebook” And in the second sentence, we see another “In fact, Facebook had 727 million daily active users as of September 2013.” For this sentence, the prepositional phrase segment by starting: “ In fact”, and the end of the sentence: “ as of September”.

     We are going to take a look at one more segment of this content.

     “Self-presentation theory suggests that people experience social anxiety as a function of their perceived inability to successfully make a desired impression upon others (Leary & Kowalski, 1995). Given that use of social networking sites such as Facebook is pervasive on college campuses (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007) and is likely a crucial component of young adults’ interactions, these young adults’ self-presentation concerns probably transfer to an online context as well. For the most part, people have the ability to control the information and pictures they post on Facebook (in addition to controlling the dissemination of others’ information about them, such as by deleting wall posts or removing tags that identify them in others’ pictures), giving them the tools to convey a desired impression to others”.

       This piece indicated that people themselves have the ability to control their utterance on the online social networking; also the youth mostly influenced by the online social networking around their social relation circle. This piece is considerably difficult to read but readable by college-educated readers, ranking with Flesch-Kincaid at a score of 14.7 and an average grade level of 20.4; such low readability requires professional training. This example is much more difficult to understand than the first piece in this assignment. There is a multitude of ways he could have stated such simple, non-complex utterances in a plain style. But he chooses to Use such diction sounds more official and credible. Every single word is objective by normative writing rather than subjective oral speaking. Because it is a critique, I felt it was important to show a paragraph of the article that was so formal and difficult.

    Although simple to read, this passage yet contains some strategies: coordination, noun substitute, relative clause, and prepositional phrases. The coordination appears throughout the second and third sentence, evidenced by the ‘and.’ Prepositional phrases are much easier to point them out, like ‘as’, ‘ such as’ and ‘ as well’.

     Among the whole content, three tables of data about Daily Social Anxiety and Interaction Success from Overall Social Competence and Daily Facebook Self- Presentation Motivation were inserted. As it is a critique, I would like to say it gives the article substantial assistance.     

Now let’s go back to the original argument: does this essay use official style because it provided many examples of famous authors and brackets, or because it is necessary for professionalism? Some people would argue that official style is unnecessary in essay and in article or the official style is abominable, in a sense they are true but not for this case. My personal belief is that it is for professionalism as an organization. An article with official style usually is intended for a specific audience within communication studies. It has some big words like “asynchronous nature” and “ interaction” for facing universal audiences. Texts written in official styles would have higher “average grade levels” with result of readability statistics. At the same time, the article with official style would likely be using some sentential adverbs like ‘in fact’, ‘for the most part’. These evidences definitely show the official style features of this article.

     In general, essay would look like more professional within official style; the essay would to be even more creditable in the author’s argument. Additionally, as I showed in the final section, there are usages of table data in this article that are arranged reasonably. I personally think the usages of official style are evidenced in the proper positions of this article such as the analysis section by using the sentential adverbs, jargon, big words and higher “average grade levels” according to the result of readability statistics. For the most part, the article is very rational and logical. Also, the subheading could be regarded as a light spot in this long, technical article.  
YU HUANG