Showing posts with label Theme 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theme 3. Show all posts
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Theme 3 Comments
1. http://stinazwahlen.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post-reflection.html?showComment=1443791964713
2. http://dm2572elvira.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-post-seminar.html?showComment=1443796328683
3. http://dm2572lisa.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-refection-post.html?showComment=1443954113996
4. http://dm2572rberggre.blogspot.se/2015/09/this-theme-was-about-understanding.html?showComment=1443955042132
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/
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/
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).
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.
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
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
Sutton, R. I. & Staw, B. M. (1995). What Theory is Not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 371-384.
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