You are choosing only one academic source - like an article or a chapter of a book / reader / monograph in the field of our project (digital studies and digital youth) and in the field of your research interests (you can choose a paper that would be helpful for your group project's program or based on your individual preferences).
You can use papers that were written in 2000 year and late, but try to focus on last papers if you have such opportunity.
We also advice you to analyze empirical-based papers since they have clearer format.
What should be in your critical essay talking on format. We advice you to have three parts (in general) in your essay:
1. description part where you describe main of a reviewed paper - program (research question(s), object and subject of a study, objectives if they are), methods that were used and collected data, main conclusions or main points of a discussion - this part shouldn't be too long,
2. in this biggest part you should put your reflection and critique on the reviewed paper - you should find disadvantages, cons, weak places - so you should critically analyze this paper and answer on the questions how this paper could be done better, what are main problems in it and what are the opportunities / ways to improve it;
this reflection / critiques can be on any part of a paper - on approach (theoretical and / or methodological), use of methods, the program of the paper itself, choose of theoretical background(s), the specifics of the study's object and work with it, etc.,
3. in the end of your essay (as third part of it) we are asking you to ask the author(s) of your paper 3 questions - specifying, criticizing weak points, offering smth, more abstractive questions about theory, etc.
Size of your essay should be 3-5 pages - try to be more concise. Font - Times New Roman, 12 with single spacing and standard margins.