Critical Analysis Report: Understanding the Dark Side of Social Media

This report presents a critical analysis of the article "Social media? It’s serious! Understanding the dark side of social media" by Baccarella et al. The analysis examines the authors' framework, which highlights the negative aspects of social media through a honeycomb structure, focusing on components such as sharing, presence, conversations, identity, and relationships. The report discusses the strengths of the article, such as using real-life examples, and its weaknesses, including an overemphasis on the negative aspects without offering clear solutions. It also evaluates the authors' persuasive techniques, such as drawing parallels with other innovations like dynamite, and assesses their success in conveying the message using the honeycomb framework to illustrate how sharing incorrect information can create a negative impression of social media and how displaying identity online can compromise personal privacy. The analysis concludes with a personal evaluation of the article's effectiveness in showcasing the negative attributes of social media in contemporary society.

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Critical Analysis Assignment
Summary
Social media has played a huge role in transforming how people communicate, share and
consume information, and interact for the last couple of decades now. Various studies have
inclined on the positive aspect that social media comes along within the society. The book,
“Social Media? It’s serious! Understanding the dark side of social media” by Christian V.
Baccarella, Timm F. Wagner, Jan H. Kietzmann, and Ian P. McCarthy aims at illustrating the dark
side of social media and showcasing some of the undesirable outcomes of social media. Just like
another existing phenomenon like capita market, crowdsourcing, and entrepreneurship, the
authors highlights that social media has got harmful effects on the society. The article shows how
some social media activities can lead to the overall decline in daily reflective thinking and instead
promote superficial thoughts that can sometimes lead to cognitive as well as moral triviality
(Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, and McCarthy 431). However, the authors argue that the level
of brightness or darkness of social media is considered to be a subjective issue.
Furthermore, the article highlights the main dark side of the seven building blocks of
social media by constructing a honeycomb structure. Through the framework, the authors unpack
the main functionality of social media in the society. The components of the framework used
include sharing, presence, conservations, identity, and relationships (Baccarella, Wagner,
Kietzmann, and McCarthy 431). For instance, the dark side of conversational functionality may

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include excessive, aggressive as well as inaccurate conversation from one person to another
through social media. Bullying and threats have been among negative sides of conversational
functionality among the Reddit users of social media (Osatuyi, Babajide, and Ofir 95).
On the other hand, one can share inappropriate information through social media. The
authors recommend people to avoid simplistic approaches but instead focus on the
multidimensional approaches when dealing with the dark hands of social media in modern society
(Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, and McCarthy 431). The author’s strength is by using real-life
examples to show the negative sides of social media in the community. Although the authors
passed the message across, one of their weaknesses is that they overemphasized on the negative
side of social media without giving a clear solution to it (Kefi, Hajer, and Charles).
The Appeals the Authors Used To Persuade the Readers
To convince their readers, the authors tend to use various examples of other innovations
that although significantly improved the ways of life, had some disadvantages. Ideally, the
authors convince the readers that no matter how good a change might seem it ought to have some
negative sides (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, and McCarthy 431). One particular example that
the article used to prove its point was the innovation of dynamite. In this light, the author points
out that although dynamite improved mining, quarrying, as well as construction, it had its dark
side especially when it was used to make explosions by armies. Similarly, the authors show their
readers that social media has no doubt some dark sides (Gao, Liu, Guo, and Li 185).
The Author’s Success in Conveying the Message
Conveying a particular message is often a hard task especially when dealing with a topic
that influences many people’s lives in society (Moqbel, Murad, and Ned 109). However, the
author uses various mechanisms in passing across the intended message to the readers. The

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successful author showcases that social media has various dark sides by using the honeycomb
framework (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, and McCarthy 431). Through this framework, the
authors are obvious with the topic by showing how one may share wrong information to people
thus creating a negative impression of social media. Additionally, the authors clearly show how
displaying one’s identity online can be detrimental because it can compromise personal privacy of
an individual. In this light, the authors use the aspect of clarity to attain success in conveying their
messages.
Discuss Your Evaluation of the Article with Supporting Details and Evidence
In my opinion, the article succeeded in showcasing the negative attributes that come along
with the use of social media in modern society. The article is well crafted and to the point,
regarding the dark side of social media. I was in a position to understand what the authors were
implying given the fact that they occasionally used real-life examples that made it simple for me
to have a glimpse of what they were saying. For instance, the authors used showcases how
stalking people in social media have become a norm in the online community. In this light, the
authors used an example where a person returns to another person’s Facebook or Instagram
profile. Such cases can be detrimental given the fact that one can use another person’s identity for
committing cybercrimes (Pillemer, Julianna, and Nancy 23).

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Works Cited
Baccarella, Christian V., et al. "Social media? It's serious! Understanding the dark side of social
media." European Management Journal 36.4 (2018): 431-438.
Gao, Wei, et al. "The dark side of ubiquitous connectivity in smartphone-based SNS: An
integrated model from information perspective." Computers in Human Behavior 84
(2018): 185-193.
Kefi, Hajer, and Charles Perez. "Dark Side of Online Social Networks: Technical, Managerial,
and Behavioral Perspectives." (2018).
Moqbel, Murad, and Ned Kock. "Unveiling the dark side of social networking sites: Personal and
work-related consequences of social networking site addiction." Information &
Management 55.1 (2018): 109-119.
Osatuyi, Babajide, and Ofir Turel. "Tug of war between social self-regulation and habit:
Explaining the experience of momentary social media addiction symptoms." Computers
in Human Behavior 85 (2018): 95-105.
Pillemer, Julianna, and Nancy P. Rothbard. "Friends Without Benefits: Understanding the Dark
Sides of Workplace Friendship." Academy of Management Review ja (2018):23-128.