DM2572 - But, like, why is it?: September 2015

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Theme 3 Reflection

This week we got to investigate the wonderful and complex world of theories, and also choose research articles to read which was a good practice for future paper writing (I have not done the bachelor thesis yet, and in that sense I think this course is an excellent preparation).

Compared to the previous themes, I’d say that this theme was not as philosophical and abstract, which of course was reflected in the seminar discussions. Here we instead tried to define the term ‘theory’, which I’ve always thought was the same as ‘hypothesis’. Actually, ‘theory’ as an everyday term is rarely used correctly in either Swedish nor English, as it is often correspondent to “I think…”. Our conclusion was that a theory explains why something is in a way that is as simple as possible (preferably at least).

We also discussed what makes a theory strong or weak, which none of us was completely sure of at first. So basically, an example of a weak theory could be that when you’re at a beach and eat ice-cream, you’ll get attacked by sharks (the theory being that you get attacked by sharks because you have eaten ice-cream). This is just based on a correlation, and not even applicable everywhere which it indirectly states. However, it is still a theory, since nothing says that a theory must be “true”. Another thing about theories is that they should be “testable”, and that one shouldn’t be afraid to question them.

As for the articles, I chose one with a psychological theme about media addiction, and what factors cause people to become dependent on internet and television. Here the authors didn’t have any theories of their own, but instead used two external theories and put them up against each other. We talked about if this was an okay strategy, and came to the conclusion that it actually was. In a way, most theories are based on others that came before them, and revising them is necessary if we want to advance. I was thinking about the new type of magnesium carbonate with super absorption-powers that was discovered by scientists at Uppsala University. For over one hundred years, scientists had written articles explaining that it was impossible to create this substance. After many failed attempts, the Uppsala scientists accidentally managed to create it after having left the test beaker over the weekend, proving all previous theories wrong. This is just one of many examples which prove the importance of questioning earlier belief.

Source

http://swednanotech.com/2013/07/uppsalaforskare-upptacker-nytt-material/

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Theme 2 Comments

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Theme 4: Quantitative research

1. Article: “Internet and Social Media Use as a Resource Among Homeless Youth”
Eric Rice, Anamika Barman-Adhikari (2013)Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12038/epdf

For this week I chose the article “Internet and Social Media Use as a Resource Among Homeless Youth” by Eric Rice and Anamika Barman-Adhikari. Here the authors have chosen a quantitative method to study how young homeless people between the ages 13-24 use internet in terms of communication, job application and house searching. The research includes 194 participants, all randomly recruited from a drop-in agency for homeless, who got to answer a survey consisting of various questions about their internet habits. The benefits of conducting a research like this could be that it generates data from many subjects in a short amount of time. Also, with a sufficient number and diversity of samples, it is possible to generalize which the authors seem to be aiming for.

The limitations with using a survey is that the participants may not be entirely truthful with the answers, especially when it’s a multiple-choice questionnaire which leaves little room for developed answers. As I understood it, there weren’t any options where the participants could evaluate themselves, which I think is a major error. This could be used as an alternative to personal interviews, which the authors stated were not possible since the youth’s were difficult to contact because of their living conditions. Furthermore, it would have been interesting to see if the results would differ depending on different regions, as opposed to just Hollywood where the research was conducted, but that’s just a personal opinion.

All in all, I found the research interesting and well thought through. The data was structured, where the authors have taken into account everything from ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and different kinds of living situations, since homelessness can be considered a diffuse term. The participants also received one 20$ gift card each for their cooperation, which was very thoughtful.

2. Article: “Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play”
Konstantina Kilteni, Ilias Bergstrom and Mel Slater
https://www.kth.se/social/files/56000bc9f2765448c25c5279/Drumming%20in%20Immersive%20Virtual%20Reality.pdf

In the article “Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play” by Konstantina Kilteni, Ilias Bergstrom and Mel Slater, it is discussed how body ownership illusions affects our behaviour. The research was done by letting 36 students play drums while wearing a head-mounted display and a motion capture suit, which created a virtual world with an avatar mimicking the movements of the real life player. The students were divided into two groups where each participant in one group got to play as a dark skinned, casually dressed male, while the other group was represented by a light skinned, formally dressed male.

The results were that the participants in the second group tended to “feel more expressive” than normal while playing the drums, as it matches the stereotype. As for the type of research, I would guess that it leans towards quantitative, as the test subjects were not handpicked, but recruited from a university campus. Furthermore, the research was done in a structured manner with a demonstration, the actual experiment followed by a questionnaire. Finally, the results were used as statistics based on all individual results, which is also typical for a quantitative method.

3. Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

As mentioned before, the benefits of using quantitative methods could be that with sufficient randomly picked samples, it is easier to generalize somewhat accurate in a shorter amount of time. This could also be something negative, but I think it all depends on the kind of research you’re doing. Another benefit is that by doing surveys, it could allow people to be anonymous and therefore answer otherwise uncomfortable questions.

4. Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

The benefits of using qualitative methods are that it allows you to be more deep and thorough in the research, as only a couple of handpicked subjects are chosen for a personal interview or an experiment. The limitations are that the results might not be applicable to a larger population.

The conclusion I draw from reading both articles and thinking about pros and cons with both quantitative and qualitative research, is that it’s probably best to mix the two. That is, to use quantitative methods to gather data and statistics in order to get a broad perspective, and to use qualitative methods to get more details.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Theme 2 - Reflection

This week we were enlightened (harhar) of the concept of enlightenment and the power of media, which was quite interesting and very relevant to our program. I haven’t really thought about the complexity of the term before, it’s actually a lot more to it than just gaining knowledge.

So basically, enlightenment encourages people to gain knowledge through observation and research instead of filling the unknown with fantasy and ‘myths’. However, enlightenment could also have some negative sides as discussed during the seminar. For example, if one would at all times observe things scientifically as they are, it wouldn’t leave much room for imagination which could actually lead to new discoveries. Compare this to Theme 1 and Copernicus, where he used a little imagination and tried doing research while assuming that the planets didn’t revolve around Earth, but instead around the sun which actually came closer to the truth. Thus I think it’s probably good to have a balance between the two.

During the week it has also become even more apparent how dangerous media is in the wrong hands. Here we discussed fascism and communism, and how media was distributing propaganda used to glorify politics. I believe that the conclusion was that mass media channels enlightenment, since it portrays society for us through research. It’s good if we experience media, while at the same time being critical to it and not believe everything that we’re being fed. If we don’t we’ll be doing what political propaganda wanted us to do, that is just conforming to everything that is portrayed. This is even more relevant today, what with social media and jaded information being spread like wildfire (I’m thinking about anti-immigration pictures for example).

Regarding the text material for this week in general (Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer), I found them much easier to read than the previous week’s philosophical bombshells. Other than enlightenment, they spoke of art and its footprints in time and how it portrays our perception of society. I also learned about “aura” of an art piece, it’s authenticity which is lost upon reproduction. Although reproduction also makes art available to society, spreading new ideas and sharing different perceptions.

Theme 1 comments

Friday, September 18, 2015

Theme 3: Research and theory

Select a research journal that you believe is relevant for media technology research. The journal should be of high quality, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above. Write a short description of the journal and what kind of research it publishes.

I’ve chosen the journal “Media Psychology” (see link below) with an impact factor of 1.1, and a five-year impact factor of a whopping 2.457. The journal publishes about 4 issues a year, with empirical research within the intersecting field between media, communication and psychology. The research topics include media use and its effect on people and society in general, where the most popular articles seem to be about media and gaming addiction, body images and how television/internet affects our behavior, which all sound interesting and relevant to me.

http://www-tandfonline-com.focus.lib.kth.se/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=hmep20#.VfhyH53tmko

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.

The article I chose is named “Unregulated Internet Use: Addiction, Habit, or Deficient Self-Regulation” by Robert LaRose, Carolyn A. Lin and Matthew S. Eastin. As the title states, it’s about addiction to media (or “dependency on media” as the authors prefer to call it), and different factors that might cause or contribute to addiction in certain individuals. The authors propose a range of hypotheses of how it’s all connected which is best described by the image below.

(Note: Here ‘self-efficacy’ means how well one uses internet. ‘Self-reactive Outcome Expectations’ is basically why we use it in terms of rewards, eg. to relieve stress, boredom or depression).

The research was done by letting 465 college students in three communication classes at two different universities answer a survey with questions regarding their use of internet and television. I immediately reacted to this method as a non optimal decision, since

1. The students are all studying communication and therefore probably use internet a lot more than others, which could be compared to ourselves at the Media Technology program (this was actually mentioned further down in the “Limitations” section in the article, so they are aware of this problem).

2. They might not be aware of their own addiction and/or usage, or simply denying it which would lead to different answers to the survey. A complementary method would probably be to study them for a couple of days as they use internet or watch television. However, all questions were based on certain scientific models for addiction and the data actually proved the majority of the theses, albeit with a more complex correlation as seen by figure 2.

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

When speaking of theory, it is easy to confuse it for a synonym for ‘hypothesis’ (I know I did), which apparently is not the case. Long story short, a theory is “the answer to queries of why” (p.378. Sutton, R. I. & Staw, B. M). In other words, it is a logical explanation of why something is or has happened, learned from empirical studies. Secondly, it’s also supposed to be “testable” and raise discussion (Gregor, S). However, writing a strong theory is not as easy as it seems, and there are almost more don’t:s than do:s. For example, a theory shouldn’t be crammed with references, but come from your own mind. Nor should it consist of pure data, lists of variables or diagrams, which rather answer the question of ‘what’ instead of ‘why’. Although, these aspects may be used to back up a theory.

2. 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?

In the article, the authors criticize two external theories, one that explains addiction as a result of a certain personality prone to addiction, while the other explains it as a conditioning process. The first theory is argued against by data showing “low to moderate correlation among television, Internet, and video game addictions, and alcohol addiction” (p.229, Larose et al). The article also mentions that any correlations could be a result of culture or lifestyle. Depression seems to be linked to any addiction, but is most likely a result of the addiction itself, and not a cause. The other theory explains addiction as a progress in four stages: initiation, transition to ongoing use, addiction, and behavior change (p.230, Larose et al).

The authors themselves proposes many hypotheses, but since none of them explains exactly why addiction occurs, I’m guessing that they are just that and not theories. After having scanned through the article, I draw the conclusion that the authors don’t really have any theory of their own, but base the research around the two external theories. These two theories are probably “Analysis”-type since they explain addiction as a result of two different causes, both of them discussable as theories should be. If they weren’t that, they could also pass as “Description”-type.

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

The benefits of using several theories could be that it gives an opportunity to truly investigate the subject from different perspectives, and also question earlier belief and opinions. However, there can also be limitations on using other people’s theories as a foundation of your own research, as it might stand in the way of new ideas when only focusing on old ones. But that probably depends on how they are used.

Sources

Robert LaRose , Carolyn A. Lin & Matthew S. Eastin (2003) Unregulated Internet Usage: Addiction, Habit, or Deficient Self-Regulation?, Media Psychology, 5:3, 225-253, DOI: 10.1207/S1532785XMEP0503_01. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0503_01

Gregor, S. (2006). The Nature of Theory in Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 30(3), 611-642.

Sutton, R. I. & Staw, B. M. (1995). What Theory is Not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 371-384.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Theme 1 - Reflection

I’ll have to be honest, when I first read the text by Immanuel Kant, I understood nothing. It was all so abstract and even though I grasped the basics, the very meaning was lost on me. However, after the Monday lecture, things started to fall in place. Then after the seminar, (and after having skimmed through the text once again), I think I’m starting to understand what it was all about.

Basically, the entire discussion is about the world and our knowledge of it. The argumentation goes that we see with our mind, and not objectively with our eyes. Thus we all perceive things differently, and therefore cannot understand the world as it is without tainting it with our own opinions. One could say that there are as many worlds as there are people, since each and every one of us is the main character of our own story and perceive things from a first person view.

Kant argues exactly this, that we can’t be truly objective about things, so if we truly want to gain knowledge we have to “climb down from God’s point of view” and investigate objects as we see them. This is also what is meant by a priori, that objects can be assigned attributes based on what we know about them without having actually investigated them in person.

So while Kant says that we cannot ignore our senses, Plato argues that we can and should ignore them in order to see the world as it is. I myself have always kind of thought that you can be objective if you just distance yourself far enough, but am now having second thoughts. Perhaps it is impossible, since people do have opinions about everything, even though we don’t want to admit it (they could be subconscious of course). If one wants to be objective, one would have to distance him or herself entirely from life, which sounds like a tedious task if you ask me. But what I've understood from this weeks discussions is that there is no real answer when it comes to philosophy. Just perceptions.

Another conclusion of this week’s theme could be that we have to keep in mind that all people are different, and thus perceive the world differently. If one would relate this to our field within media technology, it would be that systems and products we develop and/or work with have to take this into consideration. The same goes for all kinds of research and investigation really. But that’s just how I perceive it.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Theme 2: Critical media studies

Dialectic of Enlightenment

1. What is "Enlightenment"?

Enlightenment according to Adorno and Horkheimer is “mythical fear radicalized” (p.11) and is used to “dispel myths, to overthrow fantasy with knowledge” (p.1). In other words, enlightenment was a new way of thinking, a more scientific approach to the previous superstition that was prevalent in society. With enlightenment came criticism and knowledge, which also turned the power over to the bourgeois instead of the royals and the priests.

2. What is "Dialectic"?

'Dialectic' is, according to the dictionary, “a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth”. This basically means to thoroughly analyze a concept through dialogue from different perspectives and try to arrive to a conclusion that is most truthful. In a way, ‘enlightenment’ is dialectic since it also criticizes and questions itself as stated in the text, which makes it strong enough to shatter myths and become the new truth.

3. What is "Nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

‘Nominalism’ is a theory where objects which can be described by the same name, for example two trees (the name here being ‘tree’), have nothing in common except for their name. Generally, abstract concepts are treated as names instead of realities. It is probably an important concept in the text since nominalism treats objects and concepts individually and doesn’t allow generalization and fantasy, which sounds like a good quality found in dialectic methods and enlightenment.

4. What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?

‘Myth’ as explained by Adorno and Horkheimer, is fantasy and stories that is designed to awake fear in people, and in doing so controlling them (an example from the past is the church). Enlightenment is described as the antidote for this concept, as it shatters the falsehood of the myths and tells the truth about the world.

The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity

1. In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

Since the two terms were not explained in sufficient detail in the text, I had to google them in order to find out what was actually going on. Turns out that they were coined by Karl Marx himself, and are theoretical concepts used to describe human society. 'Superstructure' means all aspects in society that don’t include production (so no factories, land or material), such as political structure, ideology, social institutions and culture etc. The 'substructure' would be the economic structure of a society, whether it’s capitalistic or socialistic etc. As Benjamin states, the superstructure changes much more slowly than the substructure, but they do go hand in hand and can be analyzed in order to see how culture (and other subjects) have developed in the history of our society.

2. Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

Benjamin mainly focuses on two cultural subjects, mechanical reproduction and photography, which both have revolutionary potentials. As for reproduction, it made it possible to reproduce works of art and severely increase the distribution to the general public, creating a new sort of media powerful enough to affect politics and ideology. Then came photography, which “accelerated the pictorial reproduction so enormously that it could keep pace with speech” (Benjamin Part I), making way for the movie industry. Adorno and Horkheimer also speak of revolutionary ideas which derive from culture and knowledge.

3. Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

Benjamin argues that our perception has changed with our society and culture, and gives an example of the late Roman art industry of the 5th century, where the art style changed and became more realistic and inspired by the ancient greek artform (Benjamin Part III). When replication became popular, it destroyed the “aura” of the art, and therefore also changed the way we perceive it. One could probably say that our perception within the field of art depends on the artform of the time, as we perceive a painting or a photograph through the brush strokes of the artist or the lens of a camera. Thus we not only perceive it through our eyes, but also through the eyes of the one who created the art piece. Naturally determined perception could be the perception which we have biologically (such as color vision etc).

4. What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?

Benjamin describes the term “aura” as something unique and authentic, something that is perceived in the presence and cannot be replicated. In natural objects, the aura is created by distance and space, which could be the shadow cast from a tree branch or the reflection on water surface. As for art, the aura vanishes if the art is replicated, or if for example an actor is watched through a camera lens instead of on a stage in person (Benjamin Part IX).

Question: “Because faith is unavoidably tied to knowledge as its friend or its foe, faith perpetuates the split in the struggle to overcome knowledge: its fanaticism is the mark of its untruth, the objective admission that anyone who only believes for that reason no longer believes” (The Concept of Enlightenment p.14) What does it mean with “faith”, is it faith in God/higher power or something else?

Sources

Horkheimer & Adorno (1944). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, California.

Benjamin, W (1936). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Schocken/Random House.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nominalism

http://sociology.about.com/od/Key-Theoretical-Concepts/fl/Base-and-Superstructure.htm

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

1. In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?

In “Critique of Pure Reason” by the philosopher Immanuel Kant, knowledge is discussed in terms of a priori cognition, which is a rational theory independent of experience, and its counterpart; a posteriori, which is based on empiricism and dependent of experience.

Scientific subjects such as mathematics and physics are a priori, which according to Kant was a revolutionary discovery revealed by studying the iscoceles triangle. Greek mathematicians first looked at the figure and tried to understand it based on appearance, but later found it much more enlightening when producing the properties by thinking themselves about what it represented (p.108).

However, as mathematics and physics “traveled the secure part of science” (p.107), the same could not be said about metaphysics, which faced problems even though considered a priori (p.109). To solve these problems, Kant proposed that objects should conform to our cognition instead of vice versa, and therefore change the way of previous thinking.

An example that Kant brings up is Copernicus theorem, where Copernicus could not explain the then common belief that celestial bodies traveled around our Earth, but had greater luck when assuming the contrary - that we were in fact moving around the sun. Without any real experience of how the galaxy behaved, Copernicus discovered the science by assuming that the galaxy conformed to his cognition and did not limit himself to what was earlier assumed (p.110). A “think outside the box” sort of thing so to speak.

2. At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

In the text “Thaetetus”, Plato discusses the definition of knowledge and questions the very core of the concept. At first the word gets a simple and factual explanation by one of the characters, as he counts up fields in which to have knowledge in. As the story continues, it is revealed that the concept is a little more complex than that, since “Things appear to each one such as he perceives them” (Plato p.140). Thus knowledge is a matter of perception, and therefore is not something to just behold, but something to understand. This, I think, is probably what is meant by seeing and hearing “through” the eyes and the ears instead of “with”. That is, to perceive things with the mind, much like the case with iscoceles triangle as explained earlier. I believe that this can be linked to why it is also important to be critical to information, and to remember that studies and research should be done while keeping in mind that all subjects are different.

After having googled “empiricism”, I learned that it is a theory in which “knowledge comes only and primarily from sensory experience” which very much sounds like what Plato was discussing, but differs a bit from Kants theory that knowledge comes from many factors. I think I agree more with Kant in this case, as there is also rationalism which is described as more intellectual and deducting, and even scepticism which states that it’s basically impossible to have enough justification of knowledge. Perhaps this is also an individual thing, how knowledge is aquired that is.

Sources

Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press
Plato, Theaetetus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/