Week #3 - Research and Theory (post-reflection)

During this week, we've delved further into Research and theory, reading about different aspects of what constitutes theory, and what does not. The texts associated with this week's theme was "What Theory is Not" by Robert Sutton and Barry Staw, and "The Nature of Theory in Information Systems" by Shirley Gregor, as well as the text "Influence of Social Media Use on Discussion Network Heterogeneity and Civic Engagement: The Moderating Role of Personality Traits" by Yonghwan Kim, Shih-Hsien Hsu & Homero Gil de Zúñiga, from Journal of Communication (IF: 2.011). 

During Wednesday's seminar, we had some fruitful discussions about the nature of theory, and some important clarifications were made. There was some confusion in the wiki in the section with examples of theories, where "field of research" was easily mistaken for "research theory". I also learned that the text I'd chosen for this week, "Influence of Social Media Use on Discussion Network Heterogeneity and Civic Engagement: The Moderating Role of Personality Traits" could be filed under the "Digital politics theory", which states that "Using the internet is a positive predictor for all forms of political participation for young people. The authors did some predictions about traditional and digital participation. Media can form our views and our perception of politics. Internet use does not affect all groups in society similarly, rather it depends on a complex combination of personal and social characteristics, and the specific content and context of the medium." This was indeed the case with my text, where the authors saw a link between social media usage and civic interaction - claiming that high social media usage of introverts could be related to a heterogeneity within ones' network. 

Furthermore, a lot of the discussion was focused on the validity of theories, and when/if a theory could ascend into a higher state - a fact. There was a general consensus that the phrase "When a theory is tested and accepted by a majority of experts in that field, it can be regarded as true." was erroneous, and should be replaced, due to the fact that - if we are to don a Cartesian doubt - (almost) nothing can be regarded as true. Therefore, a more humble version was presented: "When a theory is tested and accepted by a majority of experts in that field, it can be regarded as tested and accepted by a majority of experts in that field."

Week #4 - Quantitative research (pre-reflection)

Select a media technology research paper that you argue is using quantitative methods in a good way. The paper should be of high qualityl, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above. The following are examples of questions to discuss in your blog posting:

1. Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
2. What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

The study I’ve selected is from “Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication”, and is conducted by Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe, from Michigan University. It’s called “The Benefits of Facebook ‘‘Friends:’’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites”, and examines the use of Facebook and the formation and maintenance of social capital. The study uses students from Michigan State University (MSU) as it’s target group, and relies solemnly on answers from a questionnaire. They bring forth four hypotheses based on previous studies, and try to prove or falsify these using a quantitative questionnaire sent out to 800 “random” MSU students, where 35.8% of these (N = 286) answered. The questionnaire is anonymous, but data about respondent’s in the following categories: gender, age, ethnicity, income, year in school, home residence, local residence, member of fraternity/sorority, hours of internet usage per day, and “Facebook member”.

For the questions in the questionnaire which try to extract some qualitative answers, a Likert scale (A Likert scale is - in general - you answer a statement using a scale ranging from 1-5, 1 corresponding to “strongly disagree” and 5 “strongly agree”) is used. It is the most widely used scale for questionnaires, and has been around for more than 80 years. They use this scale along with other established scales, such as when they measured the respondent’s satisfaction with life at MSU, as follows:

“Satisfaction with Life at MSU The scale of satisfaction with life at MSU was adapted from the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Suh, & Oishi, 1997; Pavot & Diener, 1993), a five-item instrument designed to measure global cognitive judgments of one’s life. [...] The reliability test for this 5-point Likert scale showed a relatively high reliability”

The reliability test they’re referring to is Cronbach’s Alpha - a way of estimating the internal consistency and reliability of a statistical basis. They calculate alpha along with the answers they received from the questionnaire, resulting in alphas from 0.70-0.87. This is in the span of “Good”, according to Wikipedia (where α ≥ 0.9 is to be seen as ‘Excellent’ and 0.6 ≤ α < 0.7 is ‘Acceptable’). Furthermore, I found a piece on Cronbach’s Alpha from researchers Mohsen Tavakol and Reg Dennick:

“High quality tests are important to evaluate the reliability of data supplied in an examination or a research study. Alpha is a commonly employed index of test reliability. Alpha is affected by the test length and dimensionality. Alpha as an index of reliability should follow the assumptions of the essentially tau-equivalent approach. A low alpha appears if these assumptions are not meet. Alpha does not simply measure test homogeneity or unidimensionality as test reliability is a function of test length. A longer test increases the reliability of a test regardless of whether the test is homogenous or not. A high value of alpha (> 0.90) may suggest redundancies and show that the test length should be shortened (Tavakol, M, Dennick, R, 2011).“

So, does the test use quantitative methods in a good way? I don’t know. I mean - I’m honestly not enough well-read in research methodology to make that assessment. But if I were to try anyway, using common sense, gut feeling (which I, for the record, wouldn't use in research) and the limited theoretical background from the bachelor’s thesis I got two years ago, I would say that this study uses quantitative methods in a good way. This, mainly judging from i) the high number of respondents (N = 286, a 35,8% answer rate), and ii) the consistent use of well-established and proven scales (Likert scale, Cronbach’s Alpha, ) and reliability tests for the items in their questionnaire. “Our three measures of social capital—bridging, bonding, and maintained social capital—were created by adapting existing scales, with wording changed to reflect the context of the study, and creating new items designed to capture Internet-specific social capital (Quan-Haase and Wellman, 2004). The full set of social capital items was factor analyzed to ensure that the items reflected three distinct dimensions (see Table 5).” But as previously said - I’m just a layman, trying to evaluate this on a too short time span.

After reading “Physical activity, stress, and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection” by Bälter, et. al., I learned that men who stresses a lot benefit more than others from physical activity, in terms of reducing self-induced URTI. I also learned that there’s no good Swedish translation for URTI (please correct me if I’m wrong), but from what I could pick up, it refers to common cold, influenza, and similar infections.

So, for starters - some kind of Qualitative vs. Quantitative 101 states three advantages of quantitative questionnaires are that you can get a lot of answers in a short period of time, bias is reduced due to everyone getting the exact same questions, and there’s a possibility of more honest replies if the respondents’ are allowed to be anonymous. The first two advantages are very tangible in for example medical research, where it could literally be a matter of life and death to reduce the bias as much as possible, as well as getting an incredibly solid statistical base. The cons of quantitative research is that you lose depth that could be valuable or even necessary to draw valid conclusions from your research. The possibility of follow-up questions are reduced, and are eliminated completely for anonymous surveys. Also, your questionnaire is just as good as your questions are. Are they poorly formulated or if the answer scale ir poorly constructed, so will your research (likely) be.

References:

Ellison, N., Steinfield, B., & Lampe, C. The Benefits of Facebook ‘‘Friends:’’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites” (2007). Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12, 1143-1168.

Tavakol, M. & Dennick, R. Making sense of Cronbach’s Alpha (2011). International Journal of Medical Education. 2:53-55.

Fondell, E., Lagerros, Y. T., Sundberg, C. J., Lekander, M., Bälter, O., Rothman, K., & Bälter, K. (2010). Physical activity, stress, and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 43(2), 272-279.

Week #3 - Research and Theory (pre-reflection)

Select a research paper that is of high quality and relevant for media technology research. The paper should have been published in a high quality journal, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above. Write a short summary of the paper and provide a critical examination of, for example, its aims, theoretical framing, research method, findings, analysis or implications.

Journal of Communication: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.focus.lib.kth.se/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1460-2466

Journal of Communication (not to be confused with Journal of Communications or International Journal of Communication) is a bi-monthly journal publishing research and scholarly articles with a broad aspect of communication. It has an impact factor of 2.011.

The paper I’ve decided to extract and briefly examine, is one called “Influence of Social Media Use on Discussion Network Heterogeneity and Civic Engagement: The Moderating Role of Personality Traits”, by authors Yonghwan Kim, Shih-Hsien Hsu, & Homero Gil de Zu´niga. What the paper aims to do is to examine how the use of social media affects individuals discussion network heterogeneity and their level of civic engagement, and also throwing in one’s personality traits as a factor. Early on, the paper asks the question: “Do social media [more specifically Facebook and Twitter, Ed.] contribute to society by exposing individuals to diverse or heterogeneous perspectives thus allowing them to participate in civic life more often?”.

The results weren’t jaw-dropping, but - simplified - they reached the conclusion that heterogeneity within ones civic engagement is "relatively better" with the introverts than the extroverts, concluding that “social media can be a useful tool for introverted individuals in helping them expand their social boundaries and civic life by providing them with the necessary information exchanges and social interactions”, adding that “this is positive news”.

While I found the piece relevant and valid, some critique may be appropriate. For starters, the research doesn’t exactly ooze with originality, and the authors do hypothesize and relate their research very much with similar, previously conducted, research, as well as coming to a lot of the same conclusions. While they are frank in doing this, it still doesn’t get as interesting as if they could present results that were groundbreaking. And while it should be known that I’m not an expert at research methods (shocker), I would say the method with which they conducted the research was fairly solid - as should be expected coming from a journal with a fairly high Impact factor. They conduct the research exploring two dependant variables and use control variables, and thoroughly accounts for how they’ve used all of the above.

As they hypothesized, the authors found that the civic engagement were higher in individuals who were active in social media, but this didn’t differ much at all between introverts and extroverts. As mentioned - these results weren’t extraordinary, in the sense that this is going to echo in social media research for years to come. This was mentioned in the discussion, and… Well, it’s almost as if you could almost sense a hint of disappointment from the authors.

Briefly explain to a first year student what theory is, and what theory is not. 

The first thing that can be said, is that Theory is not simply a collection of data, references, variables, diagrams and hypotheses, even though these five elements often are used instead of theory (Sutton, Staw). The concept of Theory is further elaborated by Shirley Gregor, who proposes a taxonomy with five categories for what theory is. These are Analysis, Explanation, Prediction, Explanation and prediction, and Design and action. Each of these categories have different characteristics, and answers to different questions (such as "What is?", "How/why is?", "What will something be?", etc). She summarizes, saying you could see theories "as abstract entities that aim to describe, explain, and enhance understanding of the world and, in some cases, to provide predictions of what will happen in the future and to give a basis for intervention and action". 

Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as? 

The major theory presented by Kim, Y, et. al, is that a high level of social media usage increases ones discussion network heterogeneity. The authors are careful in drawing conclusions, as well as proposing causality from the results. The associations and results are statistically significant, although “not large”. I would therefore want to classify the selected paper as more of Type 1 - Analysis - than anything else. It kind of wets its toes in 2. Explanations and 3. Prediction, but stays in the shallow end of the taxonomy pool. 

Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories? 

I’m not sure I’m understanding this correctly, but isn’t it so that the lack of significant and large results in the case of Kim, Y, et. al, kind of limits the “selection” of theories? I mean - of course, they could’ve presented a causality in line with their results, answering the question “why?” instead of merely “what?”. But I mean - if you get results which don’t allow you to do this, you don’t really have a choice - unless you want to be "that guy who conducts bad research". What I see as a possible benefit by presenting the theory the way they’re doing is that it strengthens related and similar research, laying another small brick in the growing collective wall of social media research, instead of trying to achieve wonders on its own - with meager results.

Week #2 - Critical Media Studies (post-reflection)

Week #2 differed greatly from week #1, in the sense that we had a lecture as well as a seminar to complement the reading. The theme was Critical Media Studies, mainly focused on the work of Frankfurt School's Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Even though it's a lot to read, I do like the flipped classroom idea of being more prepared when coming to the lecture. The seminar was focused mainly on Adorno and Horkheimer's theories on mass media and the culture industry, and how valid their theories are in our present day. A lot of voices were critical against the author's dictating rhetorics, and most agreed that their lack of humility as well as critical thinking was very unsympathetic. Also, because of the massive changes in media industry since they released "Dialectic of Enlightenment", a lot of their ideas could be discarded, while some remained valid.

The culture industry, which was in the 40s forming, has not ceased to exist - and while the threshold of producing and distributing media has lowered immensely during the last decade, due to Internet, I brought forth how the culture industry has refined and honed it's ways of delivering the promise of pleasure Adorno and Horkheimer speak of. I want to draw a parallell to a TED Talk from a math professor named Dan Meyer, who in turn quotes David Milch, saying that certain types of mass media a lot of consume causes us to develop "an impatience to irresolution". Basically saying that a lot of us are becoming neurally hard-wired to be impatient. It's a good talk, and I recommend you watch it if you have ten minutes to spare. Which most people probably do. Anyway - these theories and ideas are becoming less and less controversial each day - the text "Is Google Making us Stupid"* from 2008 by Nick Carr basically proposes the same ideas, and these theories were far from questioned when this theme occupied the Proint seminars two years ago.

Needless to say - the seminar sparked some pretty interesting discussions, and I do look forward to coming seminars.

* It's pretty profound and kind of proves the point how the second proposed Google search for the phrase "Is google making us stupid" is "Is google making us stupid summary". Also, the book "The Shallows" from the same author is recommended, if one finds these things interesting.

Week #2 - Critical Media Studies (pre-reflection)

ENLIGHTENMENT AND MYTH
Enlightenment is a set of ideas meant to emancipate the mind, the human consciousness and to distinguish reason from myth, and to liberate man from authority and mysticism. The roots of the Enlightenment can be traced centuries back, but a striking and pioneer example is Martin Luther’s protest where his ninety-five theses which were posted on the Castle Church of Wittenberg initially were a protest against clerical mysticism and devout absolution became the starting point for the entire Protestant reformation.

Adorno and Horkheimer use in their book "Dialectic of Enlightenment" the word ‘Enlightenment’ in a wider sense than merely referring to the cultural movement beginning in late the 17th/early 18th century. According to german philosopher Immanuel Kant, enlightenment liberates men by claiming human reason is capable of providing answers to questions which answers previously were reserved by authorities. Enlightenment paves way for reason, and holds it in high esteem. Reason is democratical - all men and women are capable of reaching knowledge through reason, and once the path of reason has been laid out, it can be followed by anyone. “Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity. Enlightenment’s programs was the disenchantment of the world. It wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with knowledge”

Adorno and Horkheimer of the Frankfurt school of philosophy do not hold Enlightenment in as high regard as Kant did. One of their main theses is that enlightenment has not separated us from myth. “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.” ... “Myth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity”. (But I won't elaborate on this, since I didn't fully understand their thought process leading to this conclusion).

Furthermore, Enlightenment is, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, a total state of being - it is binary by nature. Enlightenment has bred technology and progress, and that our current state of the world (mid-1940s state of the world, that is) is to be seen as a symptom of enlightenment and modernity. They go on, claiming that “the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity. Enlightenment’s programs was the disenchantment of the world. It wanted to dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with knowledge”. Continuing, they ask if we really see the world in the light of our own reason, hold reason itself as an authority, and propose that we’ve been decieved by the promises of enlightenment.

OLD AND NEW MEDIA, CULTURE INDUSTRY, AND MASS MEDIA/MASS DECEPTION
Being aware of the cultural change with the growing film and media industry with the golden ages of Hollywood as well as an increase in private radio stations, Adorno and Horkheimer took on a highly sceptical and negative point of view of what they called the culture industry - a term they themselves coined. They claim in the chapter “Enlightenment as mass deception” that the culture industry and new media denies us imagination and renders us ultrapassive. A+H go on, claiming the culture industry totalizes the audience, and that it is an instrument of mass deception - standardizing art in a manner that would make Henry Ford himself proud.

Adorno and Horkheimer describe old and new media by making a distinction between mass personal media and mass media. Old media such as the telephone is closer to art, enabling individualism, spontaneity and creativity, whilst new media, such as radio and television, is developed by the culture industry by capitalist interests, almost enslaving the consumers.

PLEASE IDENTIFY ONE OR TWO CONCEPTS/TERMS THAT YOU FIND PARTICULARLY INTERESTING. MOTIVATE YOUR CHOICE.
To be frank, I wasn’t passionately interested by this weeks text. For starters, I had a hard time reading the book - mostly due to the fact that the poor scanning quality which we were presented to didn’t really enable a good reading experience. Also, I find there’s a clear risk when reading up on modern history, especially regarding topics which evolve so quickly such as media and technology, that the path between the 1940s and today isn't as clear as you might want it to be. I've understood that "Dialectics..." is a classical work within the topic, and I did find some of the history interesting - but for a topic such as "Critical media studies", I just think something is missing - and that there might be a lot to win by supplementing this text with present-day research or articles about media criticism.

Frankfurt School All-stars. Horkheimer and Adorno kicking it in the foreground, Jürgen Habermas suavely fixing his hair in the background.

Week #1 - Theory of Science (post-reflection)

I reckon we all got off to a bit of a bad start in this course, due to the cancelled lectures and seminars. I had read some philosophy in high school and were familiar with the basic concepts of epistemology. So - while the ideas of the form of Cartesian scepticism introduced by Descartes were not new to me, Russell presented and elaborated them in a clear manner, as well as attacking them from a more modern angle, which didn't make it all in vain. However, while reading about philosophy is fun and interesting, you never learn as much as when you discuss it with others, and get completely different views than your own. I tried reading the other texts, but they all came to pretty much the same conclusion as I did, so that "a-ha" moment you can get when your views are "stötta and blötta" with others never really came to me. I'm hoping for more discussion and interactivity in the coming weeks.

Week #1 - Theory of Science (pre-reflection)

1. What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

Sense-data is in a way pretty self-explicatory. It’s data we sense, meaning everything we see, touch, smell, feel and hear. He introduces this notion since it’s an important concept in modern philosophy. The Cartesian scepticism of Renée Descartes, for example, relies heavily on sense-data. He claims everything we perceive is sense-data, implying we cannot know anything, certainly – the sense-data we take in might not be have a direct correlation with an object in the ‘real world’. Furthermore, Descartes came to the conclusion that the only thing one can be sure of actually existing, is oneself, and one’s mind. But while this cannot be directly refuted, Russell claims that there’s no reason to actually believe this, just because it’s a possibility. Only that it can’t be ruled out. The existence of a table standing before us can be doubted, but not the existence of the sense-data perceived. 

“In fact, almost all philosophers seem to be agreed that there is a real table: they almost all agree that, however much our sense-data—colour, shape, smoothness, etc.—may depend upon us, yet their occurrence is a sign of something existing independently of us, something differing, perhaps, completely from our sense-data, and yet to be regarded as causing those sense-data whenever we are in a suitable relation to the real table”

2. What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?The term “proposition” is, according to Russell, a carrier for ones beliefs about reality. It’s a derived belief about reality - regardless of whether it’s a true one, or an erroneous belief. A statement of fact is a proposition which has been validated and tested to be true, by a community. Russell gives the example that two and two equals four is more of a proposition than a statement of fact. But this is only a fact in our defined and accepted set of axioms ruling the field of mathematics, and would not be a fact in a different set of axioms.

3. In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?
The chapter begins with explaining the difference between “Knowledge by acquaintance” and “Knowledge by description”. Knowledge by acquaintance is where we experience something – we perceive the sense-data caused by a thing. “Knowledge of description”, on the other hand, is where we can know something by its description. Few of us are acquainted with Gandhi, but we still know of him and his doings, through historical knowledge and tales. The concept “Definite description” is a way to absolutely describe a single entity. A sort of one-to-one relation, if you will. It’s the difference between talking about “a man with an iron mask” and “the man with the iron mask”, where the latter is a definite description, since it only points to one single entity. The former, “a man with an iron mask”, is an “ambiguous description”, since it’s not directly related to a single entity, but could refer to many.

4. In chapter 13 ("Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion") and in chapter 14 ("The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge") Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

In Russells attempts to take on the problem with epistemology, he writes that a general idea is that we know something if we have a true belief about said thing. Russell continues, saying a problem with true belief is that they does not constitute facts – since they are often as strong as erroneous beliefs, there’s no satisfying way of knowing if your belief is true or erroneous. Also – a true belief is not a fact, it does not constitute knowledge, if the thought deduction process leading to the belief is a false one.

Russell also discusses the question and validity of intuitive knowledge and derivative knowledge, and does a quite hefty attempt in arguing for the validity in intuitive knowledge, but acknowledges the fact that this is undoubtedly a gradual scale. Although we trust our sense-data telling us a horse is trotting nearby by the sound its hooves make, the trust in the sound decreases as the horse is further away, and ultimately dimishes totally, where we on the other hand strongly trust that we don’t hear the hooves.