Theme 4: Quantitative research

1,2,3. I have chosen an article called “The Effectiveness of Short Message Service for Communication With Concerns of Privacy Protection and Conflict Avoidance” from “Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication”. I happen to be the same journal as last week so the impact factor is still 1.778 and 5-year is 4.748.
The title of the article caught my interest since my personal communication methods have changed quite a lot with the introduction of free SMS and other messaging services.

In this paper had a cross-sectional research design where they conducted surveys out on the street face-to-face with the subjects. The survey was conducted three times. The first one was a pilot study and was conducted in April 2008 in Hong Kong (183 participants), an extensive survey in Hong Kong August 2008 (558 participants) and a third extensive survey in October 2008 in Shanghai (210 participants). In total 953 valid responses were recorded and 31 were void. Those who finished the survey received a small gift as a token of appreciation.
The strengths of conducting a survey on the street are that it has a larger potential reach who answers the questions (different ages, job nature and education level) thus making it more representative, and according to the paper this kind of study will keep the response rate higher. However the response rates were 10% in Hong Kong and 8% in Shanghai, which seems low to me but they might have been lower if he survey was conducted online.
A weakness of the study is that all measurement items were collected at the same point of time. If they conducted a longitudinal study they might have been able to make predictions about the future. 
They were able to see patterns in how people preferred using SMS in certain situations e.g. to avoid conflict. The researchers speculate upon what kind of conflict they’re avoiding when sending a SMS and their speculations seems probable to me but this is a weakness when conducting quantitative studies. It’s easy to see patterns but you might need more specific information to really understand the result.
If the study was conducted online or sent to the participants by mail it would have been possible to conduct a longitudinal study which would have improved the quality of the study.

I also read “Physical activity, stress, and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection” by Fondell et al.
In this paper they were interested in the relationship between physical activity levels, perceived stress and incidence of self-reported upper respiratory tract infection. A cohort study was conducted on 1509 participants in the age between 20-60 years during a 4-month period with five follow up questionnaires. They reached 74% of the total participants. The study was conducted online.

4. Quantitative methods are great since its possible to have a large sample size. The variables are easily measured when the participants answer quantifiable questions with numbers. Even though the method provides a lot of data, the data it provides can be used to recognize patterns but not always more then that.

5. Qualitative methods are better used when the answers to the questions cant be quantifiable. The sample sizes are usually smaller but can provide more detailed information and is therefore great to conduct after a quantitative study has been conducted to be able to understand the patterns better. Due to the answers being more extensive and needs more analyzing the sample sizes usually are smaller.

Theme 3: Research and theory - Reflection

Last week we chose an article of our own. I initially had some problems finding an that appealed to me but I found one about the relationship between social capital and social media (Facebook in this study).

However when I was at the seminar and while reading other blogs I've realized I must work on my paper-finding-skills since there were many interesting papers.

When I read the questions last week and was asked to describe what theory was (before reading the course literature), my first instinct was to describe it something very similar to a hypothesis. While reading I found out that was not the case even though a hypothesis can the beginning of a theory. A hypothesis is usually an educated guess with no empirical proofs. When the proof is there, a hypothesis can become a theory.

I felt the text by Sutton and Staw gave a clearer picture of what theory means by explaining what it isn't.

At the seminar this monday we were divided into groups of three and we discussed our papers and journals with each other. Later we presented one of our papers to the whole seminar group. Ours was "Social Networking Sites: Their Users and Social Implications — A Longitudinal Study" by Petter Bae Brandtzæg. It was a quantitative longitudinal study on what social implications social media sites can have. The study was conducted on 2000 persons between 15-75 during a three-year period. Its theory was based on the "Social capital theory" which was the same as mine. What I understood at the seminar was that my paper might have fitted in the theory type: Analysis and explanation, not only analysis that I wrote in my last blogpost.

At the second seminar we talked about the theory of cooperative principle. In every conversation we usually leave room for interpretation. The theory of cooperative principle is divided into four subgroups called Gricean maxims and what these maxims explain is the assumptions we make in conversation by measuring the quality, quantity, relation and manner of the conversation.

We also looked at the course wiki on "What is theory?". I got stuck on the phrasing "theory should in some way be generalized" and we started to talk about what kind of generalizations there could be. In science of nature there usually can be a theory of something that is considered common knowledge and can be generalized but if/when it fails just once, it no longer holds. In other disciplines it might not be as easy to refute since the theories can be wide and unspecific on circumstances e.g. the theory of critical mass.

What I learned from this was that things change and old theories are continually being tested in new ways and therefore they wont last forever.

Theme 3: Research and theory

Study: The Benefits of Facebook ‘‘Friends:’’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites

By: Nicole B. Ellison Charles Steinfield & Cliff Lampe.

Published in: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 12, Issue      4, pages 1143–1168, July 2007.

Journals Impact factor: 1.778 

JCMC 5 year impact factor: 4.748.

According to Google Scholar, it has been cited 3030 times.

The study examines the relationship between Facebook and the formation (bridging and bonding) and maintenance of social capital. Social capital is an elastic term with a variety of definitions but one of them is being defined as the resources accumulated through the relationships among people (Coleman, 1988)

 286 undergraduate students at Michigan State University (MSU) completed a survey where 268 (94%) where Facebook members. They where asked about their Facebook intensity, usage, use of Facebook to meet new people, self-esteem, and satisfaction with their life at MSU. Factors like bridging-, bonding-, and maintained social capital were also measured from questions they answered. The results from the survey were analyzed using regression analysis, and suggested a strong association between Facebook and bridging-, bonding-, and maintained social capital. Another finding was Facebook ability to influence psychological well-being and it was suggested that users with low life satisfaction and low self-esteem could benefit using Facebook to gain and maintain social capital.

The study is based on a single survey done on mostly white college students. College is a time when you meet a lot of new people and therefore the surveyees’ might be more prone to add new friends to Facebook. A longitudinal study would be preferable to see if the results vary after college. Maybe more surveys should be completed in different contexts. It’s also not unthinkable that the surveyees’ misjudged how much they use Facebook.

1. The meaning of theory differs in different disciplinary areas but it strives to logically explain why and how something occur. It also can in some cases give predictions about what the future holds.According to Sutton, data, lists of variables and constructs, diagrams and hypotheses can be part of a theory but used separately, they usually can’t support a theory by themselves.

2,3 The theory presented by N.B Ellison, C. Steinfield & C. Lampe is that the use of social network sites can benefit individuals’ social capital. I would consider the theory to be of type 1 – Analysis. The authors conclude their findings demonstrate a connection between the use of Facebook and social capital. The study is conducted followed by an analysis of the result, which makes it fit the template for type 1. Since the study is based on one single survey it’s hard for the researcher to draw general conclusions that could work universally, but they give advice to future research to use multiple methodologies to overcome this studies limitations.

Theme 2: Critical media studies – Reflection

This week we have read the first 4 chapters in Dialectic of Enlightenment, a classic book in media science published in 1947. The text was quite long and written a long time ago but it still was easier to understand than last weeks reading. The book introduces some notions about the enlightenment and myths but what I found to be the most interesting was chapter 4 about the industry culture and mass deception.

Adorno and Horkheimer are criticizing what the call the new media. It’s the kind of media that is being produced for the masses in an industrial streamlining way to maximize profits for the very few in control of the industry. They think it manipulates the audience and the content the industry produces will be “standardized” and therefore lose in quality and creativity.
I agree with them on some parts. The media is controlled by very few large companies and they can exploit the lack of competition e.g. News Corporation (now split into News Corp and 21th century Fox) who was the owner of the now abandoned newspaper “News of the World”. The newspaper became famous worldwide when a phone hacking scandal was uncovered the 4^th of July 2011 and was announced it would shut down just 3 days later. In the following five days in USA, the story was told 84 times by MSNBC and 126 times by CNN but only 14 times by News Corporation owned Fox News. Fox News has more viewers than any other news channel in USA and a lot of power to sway the audiences’ view of the world. 

I wrote in my last blog post (Question 6) about how Hollywood movies often are predictable because they are produced by the same pattern. A pattern the executives know is likely to make them money. We talked a bit about this at the seminar where the studio always has final cut in a new movie. Leif Dahlberg said the last Hollywood production without studio interference was “Citizen Kane” which was released 1941!
Since Hollywood movies usually are the most popular, they could potentially reach a large audience with inspiring new creative movies but in order not to disrupt the cash flow, creativity gets chopped off during the process.

 

Theme 2: Critical media studies

1.The Age of the Enlightenment began in the late 17^th century. It was a new way of understanding the world by dispelling mysterious rumors and powers with knowledge and facts, empowering the human that earlier had been restricted by fear of the unknown. The human became master of nature, a position prior held by god.

2. A myth is something that helps us try to explain what we don’t know or understand through fictional stories. Enlightenment and science is supposed to dispel myth. For example in China people though a dragon was devouring the sun during solar eclipses. Science has thought us that is not the case, merely the moon passing between the sun and Earth. However, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that science and enlightenment itself has become myth. Instead of exploring the unknown through myth we now claim to do so through a belief in science.

3. My interpretation is that the difference between old and new media is how we consume it. New media is a streamlined process to produce content for a large audience that doesn’t reflect upon the content to any larger degree and has therefore a larger potential to control the masses. This could be any broadcasting media such as radio and TV. The text was written in the 1940s so Internet was unknown to them but as a phenomena it’s a new media. The Internet is still a very interactive media allowing people to  New media also has more of a business approach where money talks and decides what content to produce. Old media is considered media that doesn’t reach as many is of higher quality. It allows the viewer or listener to reflect and use his or her own imagination to a larger extent then new media. I would consider art, books and classical music as old media.

4,5. Culture has been forced to give in to the capitalistic society we live in and become an industry. When culture is being treated as a standardized product to fit a large audience, creativity gets lost on the way an sometimes losses its relevance. Money talks and if you don’t have financial or political backing, your message is not likely to be heard. Those who have the right backing (often only a few) can control and manipulate the masses that aren’t exposed to new ideas anymore, therefore mass deception.

6. I found the content about the culture industry and mass media to be interesting. I agree with the notion that the culture that gets most attention these days are often productions involving big money and are produced with almost the same template. In the 90s there was a lot of boy bands consisting of the same type of characters, singing similar songs and being promoted to the same audience. This was in no way a rare occasion; today we see similar things with shows like Idol. It’s not only music but also movies. Many movies have similar plots where it begins with introducing the character. The character often face some kind of challenge it has to overcome and in the end they usually do. Not very demanding to watch but people still do since it’s what we are being fed. Today we also see a lot more sequels to older movies. In this case, room for creativity and introducing challenging new ideas seems far away.

Theme 1: Theory of science - Reflection

My experience with philosophy is rather limited. I haven’t taken any courses in it at university nor at high school. So this assignment was something new for me. Usually at KTH we learn to solve problems by finding the correct answer or solution. What we learn about for example maths and physics require us to accept a scientific stance on what’s true and what’s not. Thing that have been “proven” by science is regarded as facts which we seldom dispute.

In Russell’s text he challenges accepted theories and that we can’t be sure what’s real. I think this text brought some insight on how we usually take all knowledge as facts and never questions it. It was also interesting to read about how our view on different objects is only a view of our own perception and will differ some person to person. Knowing about this is a good quality to have as a researcher or scientist. I guess we can widen our own mind if we think like this and not only get in line and conform to what some textbook or professor tells us to be true.

The text felt a bit repetitive at times but interesting. That’s usually a great way to learn, but some parts became confusing to me so I had to reread a lot of paragraphs. I’m comfortable reading in English but I’m not very experienced in reading this kind of texts so that might have added to me getting confused. However, after reading the blogs this week and the comments I got, some of the things that weren’t clear to me became clearer. I also got the feeling that I wasn’t the only one who thought the text was a bit confusing sometimes.

It was unfortunate the seminar was cancelled because it might have enlightened me further on Russell’s views.