Bakhtawar Saeed Adam Padgett ENGL 1102 February, 27th 2014 Inquiry: What is the main motive behind

virality and internet fame? Proposed thesis: The driving force behind the rising usage of social media today is due to the desire to achieve virality and become famous. Alhabash, Saleem, et al. "Between Likes And Shares: Effects Of Emotional Appeal And Virality On The Persuasiveness Of Anticyberbullying Messages On Facebook." Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking 16.3 (2013): 175-182. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. Alhabash discussed and analyzed the effects and emotional appeal to message virality through various social networks, such as twitter. The source starts out by defining a few important key terms; what cyber bullying and message virality are in relation to the study. The most prominent part of this article is the analyzation of negative and positive posts on social media. Instead of this article having an opinion or argument, it merely stated facts and backing it up with a psychological formula to model the reasoning behind certain choices that people make when using social media. I ignored most of the formula aspects of the source and focused on the major findings instead. Regarding the experimental statuses, more negative feedback made when a positive status was posted and the nice status did not go viral or gain many likes. Overall, this study showed interesting findings based on the relation between positive and negative attitudes on social media. However, the article did not explain any personal opinions which is understandable since it was simply research. It would be more helpful with an explanation summing up the findings and what the psychology team concluded from it.

Davenport, Shaun W., et al. "Twitter Versus Facebook: Exploring The Role Of Narcissism In The Motives And Usage Of Different Social Media Platforms." Computers In Human Behavior 32.(2014): 212-220. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. Davenport starts out by stating that in the popular press, it is thought to be that social media and narcissism is linked. He follows by also stating that the results and finding have been inconsistent. I can agree with this simply by having a hard time finding information on it myself. The main social media being examined by him are Twitter and Facebook and his focus group is 521 undergraduate students. Davenport also writes the different ways narcissism could be involved and includes all the different possible relationships which exhibit how he is examining the subject from all angles. One of his stated hypotheses is that Narcissism will have a stronger positive relationship with the importance of creating a profile that makes others want to become a follower (Twitter) than the importance of creating a profile that makes others want to become a friend (Facebook). Davenport is trying to find if narcissism is apparent in social media only to assist the user in gaining more virality. In his findings, he found that twitter had a higher variable of narcissism then facebook due to the concept of followers. Hong, Seoyeon, et al. "The Real You? The Role Of Visual Cues And Comment Congruence In Perceptions Of Social Attractiveness From Facebook Profiles." Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking 15.7 (2012): 339-344. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. Hong is evaluating the self-presentations of people through social media. The main focus is how people decide to present themselves to the public. The study used 104 college students. Hong states that what people see on facebook is articulated pieces of information used to generate certain impressions. Based on this, she is saying how our internet profiles give significant impression as to who we are. She also begins to discuss

the importance of social cues and how people use this to gain more positive feedback through the things they post. Hong also states that social cues have a hand at making more of a positive impression on the profile itself. Her hypothesis is that a profile picture with more social cues will gain more positive feedback than one without. In her findings, she found that having a social cue significantly increased the positive feedback and likes on the photo then one without. I thing that Hong successfully discussed the subject of self-presentation through social media by providing sound examples proven by her study and by providing her own opinions. Lee, Sang Yup. "How Do People Compare Themselves With Others On Social Network Sites?: The Case Of Facebook." Computers In Human Behavior 32.(2014): 253-260. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. Lee starts out by suggesting that people compare themselves to others all the time and begins to explain how it happens in social media. All of his hypotheses follow the general idea of positive and negative comparison through various facebook profiles. He also goes on to discuss the issue of uncertainty and self confidence in youth. These youth are using social media and are exposed to this type of behavior. He states that Adolescents tend to compare themselves with a normative reference group. He follows by explaining that the normative reference group is usually the popular kids in that adolescents age group. The study found that the self-certainty directly correlated to the persons comparison frequency on Facebook. The study also found that self-esteem correlated to this as well. Lee concludes with a psychological perspective of why this occurs and he does a good job in tying self-esteem and social comparison together by using his findings. Reiner, Andrew. "Looking for Intimacy in the Age of Facebook." The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 Nov. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

Reiner starts out by saying how plugged in the younger generation is now to social media. His opinion is that students are too invested in social media and have a hard time making a streamline thought. His example to back this up are the papers and essays that are turned into him. He states that they are ideas darted in so many directions like dragonflies, never penetrating the surface. Concluding from all this, he is stating that adolescents are too scatterbrained with their minds running to all different places. Reiner has a very biased opinion on the subject of social media, but it is explainable given his profession as a professor. He explains through the article how he tries to do various social experiment assignments to show his students how addicted they really are. Reiner correlates all of this with the conclusion of social gratification and obtaining approval from fellow peers. He mentions how he notices students manipulating their profiles to gain approval from friends and peers and their fear of falling out of the loop. Although this article is heavily opinionated and lacks sources, it is a good insight to the over thought of social media and the younger generation.