Final Reflections

 

During the course I’ve reached a deeper understanding of the concept of theory and method. The historical journey that started out with Plato in the greek empire and ended with the frankfurter school and Adorno & Horkheimer was very useful to gain an understanding of how the concepts of knowledge and view on society has changed the concepts. This chronological ladder has helped me understand the origins of theory and method and how the use of them has changed.

One thing that I will bear with me is the words of Plato “that we don’t see with our eyes we see through them” combined with Kant’s worldview and his faculties of knowledge and “the think itself”. This will actually have an impact on how I further look upon the world and science and I’m really glad that I got the chance to read it because I don’t think I would have stumbled upon it on my own.

The course further brought up numerous terms connected with theory and method. The most useful that I’ve learned more about is the oppositional word pairs: rationalism vs. empiricism, realism vs. nominalism and deduction vs. induction. These terms I’ve heard before but I hadn’t fully understood them. They are more described in context of the course in one of my blog posts.

I the middle of the course we had the workshop given by Olle Bälter that centered around, how to conduct a good survey. In small groups we discussed the strengths and weaknesses of web questionnaires and paper and in which contexts they hade the most potential. Olle who had a lot of both theoretical and practical experience from the field also shared his best tips of how to get as many and as qualitative answers as possible. This was a great part of the course as it gave some practical tips that felt easy to grasp after weeks of abstract philosophy. I will defiantly use the tips from Olle when I design my next questionnaire. More the tips and what I thought was the best parts of the workshop can be found in the blog.

In the workshop we also discussed the pros and cons of qualitative and quantitative methods which was the next block of the course I would argue, the first being more philosophical and centered around history and deconstruction of theory.

This block focused on three main methods I would say: quantitative, qualitative and case studies. In the next three seminars we read a scientific paper that used the current method in the research. From the quantitative paper I read I learned that there is a possibility of doing a quantitative study without gathering any information on your own. The data in my paper was extracted from an earlier larger survey on and adjacent topic and then compiled to the question posed by the scientists. This was a very modern and interesting way of doing a qualitative study I believe. More on this in the blog. However I will now focus more on the main topic of this post.

Combining research methods

After reading my chosen research papers and participating in the seminar discussions I’ve realized some new ways of combining research methods that I didn’t know before.

By starting out with a qualitative study and an inductive approach analysis can create very interesting hypothesizes that can be further investigated and validated by quantitative and deductive methods. For example interesting thoughts about a process can be extracted from an interview that you didn’t know existed and then an questionnaire can be designed to confirm or deny if this is projectable on a larger scale.

One other way of combing methods can be done by starting out with a quantitative study that gather some type of measurable data. After the study however new findings might be hard to understand and a qualitative follow up study can be designed to extract causality behind the results. This gives more understanding and deeper insight to the number when presented.

Both of these methods can be used when doing a case study. In a case study a complex process or social relation is investigated that often is hard to distinguish from the context. In a case study multiple data gathering methods is often used along side different methodologies to understand the causation.

The combination of research methods is the best way to produce a more credible and multidimensional result. The combination of different methods compliments each other at times, but also contradicts each other. This balances each method out and gives in the end a hopefully truer and richer account, which derives on the strengths of each method while blocking out the weaknesses.

One practice of using combined methods is called triangulation. Triangulation is a powerful technique that facilitates validation of data through cross verification from two or more sources and can for example include the following practical parts: Analytics, interviews, cultural probe, focus groups, quantitative survey and usability testing. These give a lot of different views and lots of data. The key is to use the appropriate methods for each research project and also carry out the method correct even if it’s used along side another method.

My conclusion is that there is a lot of possible methods to chose from when performing a scientific research and one should really think about the type of results that is desired when choosing one or more methods. Combining methods is a great way of gathering a large quantity of data with great richness and is good when facing very complex tasks but requires a lot of time and analytics.

Thanks for this course and thanks for reading my blog.

August Ejnarsson

Blog Comments

Here are my comments on other blogposts. I've written 5 comments on each theme + 1 extra comment summing it up to 31 comments in total, and also answered the ones in my own blog.

Theme 1

Q1: Interesting how you weave in popular culture in your answer. Have you thought about the question you pose through "John Nash"? Who decides logic and reason? Is it society, governments, scientists or others?

http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/09/critiqueof-pure-reason.html

Q2: Interesting thoughts on Kant and Plato! We also discussed the blind person case and you argue that much of our perception is based on our own bodies, experience and knowledge. But I mean, there isn't there still some sort of common understanding? Everyone sees a house like a house and the coler red as red. Then it can mean different things to different persons i guess based on our history but don't you think there is a common ground that everyone starts from?

http://zhoujie0.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_12.html

Q3:  Very good written reflection! You say that you have though a lot about how people see knowledge and I have also thought about it and one thing that popped into my head was how do you think the perception differs from KTH student and SSE (Handelshögskolan) students for example?

http://gref-tmm.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_15.html?showComment=1414234138608#c8983467867212829327

Q4: Hello Martin!

Very interesting post. I like how you related the text with your "stove" example. It makes it more clear and easier to grasp. You describe trustworthyness as an important factor for beliving in knowledge and the history of the one that shares it creates that. If you relate this to our digital age where most online posts and comments is written by strangers, how do you think this perception about trustworthiniess expands into this area?

http://martsodm2572.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory.html

Q5: Hello Illona!

I think you got a good understanding of what Kant ment. It was a really hard text to interpret and i still don't know if i fully understand it (probably not) but i like both your examples and your conclusions and i would say I agree! However it is hard to imagine how to look at thinks with only our eyes not all our faculties. Do you think this can be done in any way?

http://dm2572ilona.blogspot.se/2014/09/reflection-on-theme-1_15.html?view=sidebar

Theme 2

Q1: When you answer whats the meaning of myths according to Adorno & Horkheimer you explain what a myth is as it being an untruth, but how do you think A & H thought about why they were created? Or what do you think yourself. Who creates myth (untruths) and for which reasons?

http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies.html

Q2: I also found it hard to grasp the concept of nominalism in the beginning. But i think you used a good example. What do you think is the strenghts and weakneses in the nominisit view discussing the context of the article?

http://zhoujie0.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies.html

Q3: I think the era of enlightenment is very interesting and you have a good definition of what the enlightenment is and ment. Do you think there have been time frames after the original enlightenment which have had the same sort of effects in how we loo upon things?

http://gref-tmm.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-before.html

Q4: Hello! Good reflection!

I have also been thinking about the role of philosophy in engineering and I have more and more felt that it's growing in importance. I think It differs our title from "civil"engineers to regular (3 years education) engineers. It's also what i've read. That we "civil" are more adaptable for change and think in deeper and more complex ways. I acually think philosophy courses like this have a big part in it. D you agree or do you think it depends on other elements?

http://martsodm2572.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-post.html

Q5: I like how you involve the pictures in you posts! Makes it much more fun to read.

I also think you have very good thoughts on each questions especially the one with the included picture to illustrate. It makes it very clear what you mean. Why do you think this view of society changes and why things in the fifties that is just 60 years away can be so far away in our minds now when they were a part of everyday thoughts before?

http://dm2572ilona.blogspot.se/2014/09/thoughts-on-theme-2.html?view=sidebar

Theme 3

Q1: I agree with your opinion that some articles thay is written in important papers sometimes seems very insignificant. But whats important sometimes when it comes to citiation i belive is just the fact you state with aritcles that make an extensive litterature review and combine all or alot of topics on the subject to one article. It might not be very world changeing you could argue but I think it fill

an important role in the science sphere. I would argue the same thing about some reaserch that you think is more or less obvious, but if no one have researched it you can't really have it as a source no mather how simple it sometimes might be.

http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-research-and-theory.html

Q2: I like your definition about theory and I thinks it's correspont to mine quite well. I just wonder how you see the difference between a "theory" and a "hypothesis" since we discussed this alot in our seminar.

http://zhoujie0.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-3-research-and-theory.html

Q3: I have thought about this concept of theoris in our common language also that you speek of. Some people very much speek in theories I would agree but sometimes not so justified, that being loosly based theories but in common talk you can't only base whay you say on proven theories, that wouldn't make much of a conversation. have you thought about anything like this?

http://gref-tmm.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-after.html

Q4: I agree with you on the part that they should have done more qualitative testing on feelings after using SNS. I mean doesn't this relate a bit back to Kant and how we see knowledge. If social life is seen by how many interactions you have (pure data - empirical view) or how you feal about the interactions you have. I would argue for the latter.

http://martsodm2572.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-pre-seminar.html

Q5: Good post!

In the end you argue that a new study is required to decide if their study acually can produce real change. Do you think it would have been possible to draw there kind of conclusions after this study if it were designed in a different way or do you think it would have been to extensive?

Great job!

http://dm2572ilona.blogspot.se/2014/09/reflections-on-theme-3-research-and.html?view=sidebar

Theme 4

Q1: You argue about the validness of information about how sick people are according to their perception. I agree in your reasoning but do you think they should have maid more medical test about there status? Then we come back to Kant a bit. Isn't how sick you are just your perception or is it based on number in blood value and etc?

http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-4-quantitative-research.html

Q2: I agree in you definition about the strenghts of qualitative methods but i don't fully understand how you describe the weaknesses. You say "The method is based on data which collect from testers, the data are according to the testers’ thought at that time. So the data can be affected at that time and will not have high accuracy. This why the researchers always use the method for general fields of researching." Do you mean that it's a larger chanse to get affected in a negative way while filling in forms then in an interview? I think it's really interesting but would you maybe clarify with one example?

http://zhoujie0.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-quantitative-research.html

Q3: Hi Andreas! Good Post!

You mention that questionairre "rely on so many psychological factors about stuff like how to create unambiguous questions, driving motivation for participants to answer and what questions to include." I agree but do you think researchers and journalists use these psychological factors to get a prefered result or do you think it's unintentional?

http://gref-tmm.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-quantitative-research-after.html?showComment=1414235011718#c8681949881701270262

Q4: Well written post and I learned quite much the same. In the workshop we also talked about the interactive possibility of web surveys. You didn't mention it in your text but do you think that i can be useful in any way?

http://martsodm2572.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-quantitative-research-post.html

Q5: I like your reasoning and your conclusions! Based on this and especially what you consider being the limits of using qualitative methods. Is there any type of method you would prefere if conducting a study and why? Any part that is more apealing or you thing generate more interesting results?

http://dm2572ilona.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflection-on-theme-4-quantitative.html?view=sidebar

Q6:

Hello!

I also think Olle Bälters "golden rules" of creating and sending out a survey was very good and useful. Some steps could maybe be considered as a "no-brainer" but it's easy to miss there things. I would definitly use them when conducting my own survey. Was there anything you personally would have added to the list or do you think it's more or less complete?

http://dm2572ilona.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflection-on-theme-4-after.html?showComment=1414397005311

Theme 5

Q1: I totally agree with what you say about Ewa-Lotta, didn't give me anything. However I think Haibo for once gave a good lecture! You mention his advice about spending more time (90%) on defining the question and 10 % solving it. First I thought, "hey this make sense and sound reasonable". I agree with his arguments but then i thought about something I learned in programming, which was. Spend 90 % do / try and 10 % think. Because you learn from what you do and if you just spend time thinking about the problem you will never solve it. What do you think about this?

http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-postreflection-design-research.html

Q2: I really like your answer to "Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?" and I agree with what you say! What do you think will happend if the POC prototype fails to bring proof, would you alter it unitl it did or would you put it in the junkyard and focus on other research?

http://zhoujie0.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-design-research.html

Q3: The kill your darlings concept that you mention I also think is very good but also very hard. But i've also learned that a text or solution almost everytime gets better the second or third time you iterate.

http://gref-tmm.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-design-research-after.html

Q4:  Hello! Good work! you answer the question "How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?" and you propose that first qualitative studies can be use to form an hypothesis followed by a quantitative to prove it. I very much agree with this line of work but do you think you can switch the order and still use both types of methods in an effective way?

http://martsodm2572.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-design-research-pre-seminar.html

Q5: Hi! I think it's a good post and I agree with you and the other comments on this posts. The philosophical subjects i think creates and more open mind and a different chain of thought then just result oriented engineers or economs.

http://dm2572ilona.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflections-on-theme-5-after.html?view=sidebar

Theme 6

Q1: When we discussed what a case study acually is, it came to my understanding that it was not as simple as I first thought. You say a case study is "analysis of a person, group or event" as mentioned on Wikipedia. It is a method that is conducted with examples from one or several real-life phenomenon analysing them and creates or test theories." But then what is a case study not? Isn't everything some sort of study of an event, person or group in some way?

http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study.html

Q2:  You argue that the limitations of the study is the following: The main methodological problems in the study is that the interview participants were chosen largely based on how they had answered the previous surveys. So the results will depend on the chosen participants. The research questions can be describe more generally in the research area , so the results maybe can more accurately. Don't you think that they get better results by using this method? If they didn't have the pre study they might have gotten irrelevant particiapants? Or do you disagree? Well written otherwise

http://zhoujie0.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study.html

Q3: Hello Andreas! Good post! You write: "The thing that seems to me like the hardest part of a case study is how to choose which data to gather and how to process it afterwards. " And i agree, i also sometimes think researchers might be biased in how they choose what information they use. Have you thought about this?

http://gref-tmm.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study_20.html?showComment=1414235745807#c2293759214985392157

Q4: Another good post! Well done!

You write about their multiple data collection methods and that they had sufficient infromation to be able to draw conclusions. Do you think there is a risk of gathering to much information so the results get blurry when doing a qualitative analysis?

http://martsodm2572.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study.html

Q5: Hello Illona!

I totally agree with you about the confusion about what a case study acually is? I had the same understanding as you before the seminar which totally got blow away after it. I think we also mentioned complexity and combination of theoris as a part of a case study. Compared to the other methods in the course do you think a case study is harder or more complex to carry out or do you think it would be possible to pull of?

http://dm2572ilona.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflection-on-theme-6-after.html?view=sidebar

POST seminar 6

Seminar 6 the last seminar of the course.

The topic was case studies and qualitative research. We mainly focused on the case study part and began with discussing the questions "what is acually a case study?" Before the seminar I had some idea about that it was a research that studied one or more real life cases to build an hypothesis about something or study a phenomenon within the chosen area. Preferably in my predefined idea about case studies my mind was set at some sort of industry case study where the focus was on how one or more companies manages a specific issue or process. After the seminar I have realised that a case study is much more. However exactly what it is, is still a bit blurry to me since i've come to the understanding that it can be more than one thing. But i'll to break down what I learned:

In a case study the object that is studied is usually an accepted phenomenon. For example, if doing a case study about a how companies use social media. Social media is already defined.

In a case study the researchers delimits the area of focus. Usualy to a couple of cases and a specific question. This is one of the hardest parts of doing a case study from what i've understood. To set limits that is not to wide nor to small.

A case study usually examines a very complex phenomenon and requires researchers to look at the context of the phenomenon to understand the problem.

An important part in a case study (maybe even mandatory?) is to use different methods to understand the complex processes and questions posed.

A case study uses an inductive method and researchers should try to contain their predefined hypothesis when diving into a case study and draw the conclusions simply of what they learn.

One of the main points of doing a case study is to generate new hypothesis, which requires the case study to look at something unique or look at something in a unique way.

These are my new understandings of what a case study is and how it's used. I think my predefined understanding of a case study was a little bit affected by our case solving problems in our other media management course which gave me a wrong impression. But even if I still think it's the whole case study concept is a bit cloudy i've atleast got a much more correct view now.

Pre Seminar 6

Journal: New Media & Society
Impact Factor: 2.052

Paper:  Credit, time, and personality: The human challenges to sharing scholarly work using Web 2.0


Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

This article is based upon analysis of qualitative interviews, observations, workshops, and textual data collected from a seven-year long project about future of scholarly communications. The interviews in the project were conducted over one- to two hours in a semi-structured way. The participants were over 160 faculty, librarians, and publishers across more than 45 ‘elite’ research institutions largely in North America (and some in Western Europe) in over 12 disciplines.

So the researcher didn't do the actual qualitative methods themselves except the analyze part but based this on a smorgasbord of qualitative research methods from another study.

The first major benefit is that they had a large pool of data to base the study on without spending any resources on the actual interviews and participation gathering. They also had a lot of different data from a alot of different methods to proceed from which gave them a lot of opportunities.

The limitaitons is that they couldn't ask the questions themselves and se the reactions and everything that goes on around the transcripts which is very important in qualitative research. They also couldn't form the questions and interview strategies exactly how they wanted. They were force to deal with the material they had, even if this was pretty extensive.

What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

Different types of methods can be mixed and combined in the same paper to give more extensive data. I also realized that you could make quanlitative reaserch without conducting interviews and observations yourself, you can just take this data and analyse it if you can get it from another source.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

They base there reaserch on a very big database of information with mixed types of qualitative methods. I can se a problem in extracting relevant information from this database especially when it's qualitative data. If it was quantitative numbers could easily be compiled and visualized by charts and graphs but this qualitiative data needs deep analytics and I see a problem in the way they handle all this big qualitative data. There is a big risk of just gathering the data that fits your purpose and ignoring the ones that arn't as good. 

To improve this study I think they should have  done the interview themselves or maybe instead of just analyzing data from a study, interviewd the interviewers to get a better picture of their understanding of the study and then analyzed that. 

Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

A case study is a way of using a single or several examples of “real-life” phenomena, events or persons to analyze and consequently derive conclusions. It can be used to test a theory or generate theories in a specific industry or in society.
 
Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper. 

Journal: Internation Journal of Information and Managment
Paper: Social media competitive analysis and text mining: A case study in the pizza industry


Short summery:

The paper perform a social media competitive analysis for the three largest pizza chains in America and to generate a theory that can help decision makers and e-marketers when managing user genrated content.

Defenition of research questions:

What patterns can be found from their Facebook sites respectively?

What patterns can be found from their Twitter sites respectively?

What are the main differences in terms of their Facebook and Twitter patterns?

Selecting Cases

The 3 largets pizza business in America: Pizza Hut, Domino's Pizza, Papa John's Pizza 

Crafting instrument and protocols

Text mining to analyze unstructured text content on Facebook and Twitter.

Strenghts and Weaknesses:

They make a thourough analysis of each of the three cases and compare them both on quantitative values like number of interactions and responses as well as qualitative comparations with quotes from customers and companies. This gives a good picture of how all the companies handle the social media and how they use it to create a social bond to the customers. The study is very well designed and I think it covers more and less all steps of Eisenhardts Table. One thing that I think could be improved is the step when analyzing data with the cross-case pattern search, using divergent techniques. Beyond looking at the comments on the social media platforms they could have interviewed the companies to see if they had different strategies or if the interactions occured without any deeper thoughts. This could have shed some more light on how the companies chose to work with social media. One other possible weakness is the fact they they only used the largest companies. It would've been interesting to see how smaller pizza places used social media to interacti with their customers aswell.

Post Seminar 5 (lecture 5)

So this week we didn't have a seminar, instead there were supposed to be two lectures. However since one got cancelled there isn't so much to reflect on this week but i'll do the best with the things I got.

The lecture this week was held by Ewa-lotta Sällnäs and were supposed to concern the combination of quantitative and qualitative studies as I underwood it. However Ewa-lotta talked most about her actual research in haptics and not so much about the there and method. This was a bit disappointing and to be honest I didn't get much of the lecture but here the parts that i take with me.

Qualitative data can give quantified results and vice-verse. Ewa-lotta talked about how she first conducted a qualitative study in which she could extract quantitative information. By doing this she could combine the strengths of both methods. The same thing could also be done the other way around she argued. By first conducting a quantitative study and analysing the results in a qualitative way.

In her research she talked about how haptics could affect the virtual presence and be used in computer games for example to tone down the often aggressive statements by assigning them haptical feedback. I this way there emotions would get more depths and people might think twice before launching an aggressive or abusive comment.

She also talked about how haptics could help to replace verbal communication in navigation and how this could be useful for sight impaired people.

PRE Seminar 5

Theme 5: Design research

Part 1 (Monday)

How can media technologies be evaluated?
In the paper they use the ISO definitions of what they are trying to achieve, in this case usability and set up experements for how to test these things. Then they evaluate the success of the experiment and based on this conclude what was good or bad in the techology and what needs to be done to improve it.

Different HCI tools like "think aloud testing" can also be used. 

What role will prototypes play in research?
In research and development prototypes is used in different technical advanced steps to offer a good basis for decision making when evaluating and improving the product. It's also a way of showing the progress of the research to investors for continous financial support. 

Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
The proof of concept prototype is used to test if the theory, technique or technology is feasible. If the results are promising, further research and development of the object can be done. If the tests if the prototype isn't successful the reaserch might be dropped or heavily redesigned.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
- Prototypes will represent some compromise from the final production design
- Due to differences in materials, processes and design fidelity, it is possible that a prototype may fail to perform acceptably whereas the production design may have been sound. Howevery the vice versa might also occur if other procces that haven't yet been implemented in the prototype effects its performance.
- The prototype will probably be more expensive in producing as it's a single unit compared to further mass developing of the real product.
-The prototype can eliminate a lot of risks and errors, but not everyone!
-Parts of the complete product can be developed as a prototype to test problematic areas.

How can design research be communicated/presented?
The first protorype will probably look like a high school metal project, there for it might be good to refinde the aesthetics of the prototype before presenting it. It's also good to be very clear in the instructions of what the protoype is ment to show and what not. 

Part 2 (Wednesday)

How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?
A collaborative setting focuses on the communication and social interaction between the participants. The first text also emphasis that group work can increase a child’s potential to understand and solve more complicated problems dialogue with peers or an adult compared to when working alone. The text also argues it's a part of the socialization process.

How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?
Qualitative methods can be used to gain a understanding of a problem or a phenomenon and as a base of forming a hypothesis and then a quantitative study can be used to test this hypothesis and if succesful be projected to a larger scale.

When combining the two methods the limitations of one type of data are balanced by the strengths of another, however it is important to plan in advance how these will be combined.

How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?
When evaluating a subjective phenomenon it can be hard to measure and compare it. For example in healthcare pain is a subjective phenomenon but in order to treat it some kind of objective measurement is needed. Therorefor subjective and objective methods needs to be combined to give a better understanding of the situation.

When using subjective methods one is always putting the phenomenon in it's own context of perception which can infuelnce the resluts of the research. By applying objective methods to this subjevtive conclusion one might get a broader view of significance and generalizibility of the research.

 

POST workshop 1 (sem 4)

In this seminar or "workshop" we discussed not so many deep and complex questions as before, instead it was more hands-on on the pros and cons in qualitative and quantitative research and tips and tricks for conducting these.

First we discussed in groups and came up with these advantages of qualitative research:

-uncover information about individuals thought and experiences
- looks beyond percentages to understand people
-rich in-depth results
-more adaptable and flexible
-size doesn’t matter (smaller size than for quantitative studies)
very specific answers on topic
(more comprehensive answers)
-participants more engaged in research
-whole picture answers/results
-can give more answers/result than hoped
-useful when describing complex phenomenons

 Then we did the same with quantitative research and came up with these advantages (name 3):

-easy to compare/compile
-easy to visualize (graphics)
-easy to test large number of peoples

We then proceeded to discuss the advantages of web vs papers questionnaires. We were to come up with three answers per group.

Web pros:

-Have neutral answers for questionnaires. 
-Uneven number of answers.
-Don’t have ambiguity

Paper Pros (disadvantages of web surveys):

-Might write extra commentary o cross between answers
-Distribution through email might end up in the spam folder
-More easily distracted with web

The discussions were interesting and we got a lot of good and new perspectives on both advantages and limitations of each type of survey. When we discussed this I realised how many mistakes I made when conducting the survey of my Kex job. But I also learned a lot from that process so I think the next survey that I conduct will significantly improved. 

Explicit tips I take with me from this seminar is the following:

-It's good to rip others seminar or at least copy some parts that you think is good if it can fit in you survey if you trust the source and it helps with inspiration. 

-Create a good mix of questions that yields both good information and makes the questionnaire more interesting for the respondent. 

-Test the survey out before sending the live version to avoid fall pits, unclear languages and technical errors. Think aloud evaluation is a very good tool for testing.

-Generally don't use even scales since it might frustrate the respondent. 

-Don't use ambiguous formulations i.e one question that can interpreted in two ore more ways.

I also learned the best proceedings to get a high response rate according to Olle Bälter at least. 

1. Send an invitation letter explaining the purpose of the upcoming survey. Important to not attach the actual questionnaire to this letter.
2. Send the survey after the initial info letter
3. REMIND, REMIND, AND REMIND. Use letters, Phone or mail. A high response rate is crucial for surveys!

Pre Seminar 4 (Workshop)

Theme 4: Quantitative research

Journal: New media & society 2014 
Impact Factor: 2.052 
Paper: A socio-economic exploration of mobile phone service have-nots in Sweden

Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

The methods used is information gathering through questionnaires. The authors have taken advantage of an annual survey by the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency from 2008 to 2010. This survey was distributed to 4000 respondents in Sweden between the age of 16 and 75 by both web and mail. The original questionnaire had the purpose of providing information about the market from a consumer perspective, the respondents were asked to provide information on their socio-economic and demographic background as well as responses related to usage of telecommunication services, includ- ing fixed phone, Internet and mobile phone. The authors have then used a part of this information to analyse which the factors that can be generalised for users that don't own a mobile phone.

The benefits from this method is that first of all they didn't have to do the survey themselves which saved a lot of time. By using already collected data they could focus on the analyse. Otherwise they would have to wait at least three years before they could se anything of value. They also got a quite large pool of respondents since the Post and Telecom Agency have a wide reach. The use of annual surveys gives a stronger base for projections for the future.

The limitations of using an already conducted survey is that you can't ask the exact questions you want. You are forced to deal with the material you got and there might be something missing that you could have found if you were conducting the survey yourself. This study also gives no deeper insight in WHY people don't use mobile phones only which demographic factors that effect the case. So technically we can't draw so many conclusions from just this particular research. 


What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
That you can take advantage of already existing surveys even if they don't exactly was created for your research purpose you might be able to extract useful information which you can analyse.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?
Since the purpose of the original study wasn't to see which people didn't use mobile phones they don't get enough useful information about the ones that are "have-nots" (don't use mobile phones). If that would have been the original purpose they could've asked more questions about the reasons for not using a phone and with the same questionnaire they could've gotten much more and richer data. So by doing a survey that only focus on these have-nots they could get more useful results that can be used to draw deeper conclusions.

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

Benefits:

• Strenghts in numbers, from a series of test or questionnaires research will often yield data that's projectable to a larger population.
• Becuase of its basis in numbers, data can easily be transformed into quantifiable charts and graphics.
• "Bigger is better"

Limitations:

• Large samples of data are required which can be hard to gather. 
• Large samples can be expensive to collect.
• Not so flexible, you often go for a type of test and stick with it.
• The short nature of a quantitative test makes it sensetive for statistical errors

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

Benefits:

•  Looks beyond the percentages to gain an understanding of the participants feelings, impressions and viewpoints.
• Rich in-depth resluts with insight unobtainable from quantitative market research techniques.
• Flexible, highly-focused and designed to be completed quickly
• "Size doesn't matter"

Limitations:

• Since the analysis is subjective and deals with a small sample size, projectability is not possible to a larger scale. 
• Won't provide reaserchers with definitive conclusions, only with enough information to establish a basic understanding that can be further investigated.
• Trained moderators are essential to the success of qualitative research. Placed in the hands of an untrained moderator, a qualitative research study's chance of success is vastly diminished.

POST Seminar 3

In the seminar we began discussing a little bit about , what is theory? and how does it differ from a hypothesis, assertion and concept.

There was a bit of unclearness here but I think I got the picture of it.

A hypothesis is something that can be tested and then evaluated if it's correct or not. This is quite common in many papers and theories can somtimes be formed as a hypothesis in research purposes.

An assertion (påstående) is commonly more aggressive and must be true or false.

A concept (begrepp) is the abstract content of a linguistic term.

And finally a theory is a set of propositions

So with that a little more clear, it got easier to point out the theories of in my article. I had previously only found one theory but when I read the text again I now found three theories residing within the article however not explicitly stated. I will go through them here one by one.

• Femenism theory

Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality . It examines women's social roles, experience, interests, and feminist politics in a variety of fields. In my article it focused on femenism in the field of virtual and digital spaces. I would say this is an explanation theory.

• Theory of how to look upon computer games and culture
• 'we should look at video games in culture rather than games as culture'

This theory is used as a base of how to approach the subject. In Gregors taxonomy I would place this as a design and action theory.

• Theory about how digital and virtual worlds are connected
• 'They are not independent'

This is a theory about the relation between digital and virtual spaces and the author uses this theory to prove that things that happend inside the virtual worlds doesn't stay there they are carried on to the "real" digital world and problems that reside within the world can be carried out and dicsussed here. I would place this as a explanatory theory 

Pre Seminar 3

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.
  
Selected Journal: New Media & Society
Impact Factor: 2.052

New Media & Society is a top-ranked, peer-reviewed, international journal that publishes key research from communication, media and cultural studies, as well as sociology, geography, anthropology, economics, the political and information sciences and the humanities. It is committed to high-quality research that explores the relationship between theory, policy and practice. 


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.

Article: 'Seriously, get out': Feminists on the forums and the War(craft) on women
Author: Andrea Braithwaite
Published: 2014 16: 703 originally published online 12 June 2013
 
Journal:  New Media & Society
Impact Factor: 2.052

I chose this article because of the conncetion between its content and last weeks dicsussion about culture and revolutionary potentials. The article discusses the modern media of video game and its effect on society in terms of femenism, i sense a close link here to the thoughts of Adorno & Horkheimer and their thoughts of mass media in the United States.

Short Summery:
The article discusses the mirroring of societies gender roles in the computer game World of Warcraft, with the outset in the introduction of a new game character called Ji Firepaw who initially greeted characters with gendered and sexist dialogue. The article countinues to discuss how femenism and femenists are treated in virtual spaces and illustrating how the digital and the virtual are not independent spaces.

The article aims to explain the gender roles in computer games and in particular World of Warcraft and how it is not just a fantasy game but a extension of the real gender roles in society. The aim is quite clear but it's very wide and doesn't really fullfull this with the case study thas is given. It feels a bit narrow for the wide aim of the article. The theoretical framing used is the thought that "we should look at video games in culture rather than games as culture' this combines with the method of critical discourse analysis wich is used to investigate the role of discourse in the (re)production and challenge of dominance with focus on feminism and relations of power that are made visible around gendered subjects. I don't know if this is a accepted thought in the society/computer game research but I don't think there is enough background and evidence presented to strengthen this theory.

The main discussion is also circuling around a tiny interaction of the game and i think to provide a more trustworthy conclusion a more wholistic approach should've been taken.

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1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is, and what theory is not.      The definition of "theory" is not solid and can differ within different schools of research and disciplines but the main concept n a general level shows 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 happend in the future and to give a basis for intervention and action. Theory is not a collection of facts, or knowledge of individual facs or events.
   
   
   
   
   
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? I would say the theories used is Adrienne Shaw’s view that 'we should look at video games in culture rather than games as culture'. I would place it in table 2, as an explanation theory since it tells us how to look at something but doesn't give any testable propositions. However i think this article was quite unclear in terms of presenting its theories so it might have been a bad choice i now realize.
3. Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories? It gives us a good approach to the problem and an view that is interesting and can connect to the everyday society and bring us new insights to a new media channel. However we might miss out on other important parts in the discussion if we isolate the thoughts to not see games as a form of culture. 

POST Seminar 2

In the last lecture we got a bit of a history lesson which explained in which contexts the authors wrote their texts. This was very useful and closely connected to the theme of this week, maybe in particular Benjamins historicaly determined perception.

The meaning of this got a bit clearer to me during this seminar, he is talking about a contextualized perception, meaning that we can't see anything without its context and our historical perception of the object. I think this can be linked to Kants categories of understanding and "the thing itself". We have this separation between the real object and our perception. Benjamin is building on these thoughts from Kant it seems and adding history as a strong factor of how we interpret objects. Because if you think about it different objects is intepreted in different ways at different times. The strongest example might be the swastika who originally (as we know at least) was a symbol among the ancient Celts, Indians, and Greeks and have had alot of different meanings until it was adopted by the German nazi party in the 1920's. This was one of the main insights from this text i think and should be remembered.

In the seminar we also discussed the nominalist concept, and its importance for Adorno & Horkheimer. I got two important things out of these discussions. The first was why Adorno & Horkheimer indroduced the realism concept again in combination with the nominalist altough they came from the enlightenment. They saw that nominalist concept just observed and described the society and in the times of the second world war this view couldn't make anything better. So a realism idealworld kind of thought needed to be re-introduced not in a religious and spiritual way more in a pragmatic demokratic kind of way. So by combining this idealworld with the nominalist view of people society could change.

The other thing that we discussed and became clearer were Benjamin and Adorno & Horkheimers different view of culuture and mass media and its revolutionary potentials. Benjamins view was in favor for the potential and thought that mass media and technology could change the way we saw things. For example when the camera was intoduced we saw moving things in a different way which change the way we thought of them. Adorno & Horkheime who lived in America saw how the culture and mass media effected the people. Instead of giving them freedom and an open mind mass media reinforeced the gender roles and made people accpeting their socitial roles, instead of revolutionize against them.

Very interesting seminar and a good guest lecturer!

PRE Seminar 2

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment
 
a. What is "Enlightenment"?
 Enlightenment can refere to the full comprehension of a situation, in a way it's knowledge, awareness and wisdom. A way of distance oneself from myths and fears.

b. What is "dialectic"?
 A method which focuses on argument to resolve disagreement and a way of reaching enlightenment you can possibly argue.

c. What is "nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?
Nominalism is a theory which denies the real existence of any general entities such as, species, properties, sets or other categories.The only things that exist are the ones that are concrete.

d. What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?
The meaning of a myth is to replace a current unknown thing with something to make people feel safer. Even if a thing isn't true it's better to have something (a myth) then not knowing at all.

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2. "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity"

a. 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?

The base of the socity wich everything is built on and relies on is the substructure. In the text it's for example machines, factories and so forth. If you zoom out one step you find the superstructure which is the thing built upon this substructure and that is not directly connected with it. Examples of these things is the laws, regulations, families, and cultural production. In Marxist point of view these to structures are connected. Both is relevant for the society to work properly.

b. 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?

Yes i think so, culture is like very changeble much like technology, and they often can come hand in hand. When the camera technology came it revolutionized the world of the art. However i think Adorno & Horkheimer sees it different from Benjamin in the way that Benjamin belives culure is based on a form of  originality while Adorno & Horkheimer is more in favor of the technical enlightenment way. They think revolution is more in terms of new techniques and knowledges.


c. 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).

The natural percpetion is the one that we have from the beginning that comes from our mind. They way we experiance the world and this can be different from person to person. However perception can also be based on history and events that we have seen. This could change the way we percieve things. It could be wars, revolutions or good and bad experiances from many different thing, maybe marrige is one thing that could give both very happy and bad perceptions based on person history.


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

An aura is the uniqness of an object the thing that doesn't make it alike to anything other the originality you could say. For example a teather play is never really the same while a movie is an exact copy. Arth objects have the auro of that you know it's truly unique while a natural object can be percieved very different from the contemplator. Especially in culture so yes i belive that natural objects also can have an aura however not in the exact same way as art for example.

Post Seminar 1

So we've just hade the first seminar of the course and i'll just reflect a little bit about what we were talking about and what i've learned.

First of all I would like to say it was hard to understand Kant after both reading the text and after the first lecture and even if I still don't think I get the whole idea i've come closer to understanding what he is talking about. The following is what I got out of the seminar and what i think is really interesting.

The world as we know it, is built upon forms of intuition like time and space and categories of understanding like "unity", "limitaion", "substance" and "possibility". The forms of intuition like time & space are not the world but makes the world what it is. It sounds a bit weird but if you think about it, thats how it is. Time and space gives the world a meaning and the world i structured by meaning. Without time i would be writing this blog right now because i would't be able to see a future where this blog would be read or examined. It's the same with space. I can't imagine a world without space, but maybe a space without a world.

Kant tries to figure out and articulate how the world is structured, one thought that i've gotten from all of this is that there is no world independent of us since we are the world and thats how we should look at things. The world you could say is structured by meaning. What Plato then says that we don't see the world with our ears and eyes we see it through them, he may refered to that we see the world through our experiences and our categories of understanding that Kant talks about. We see the world with a meaning not as the thing itself. In this way you could say he challenges naturalistic and sceintific way we see the world today. In his saying "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects..." instead "...we assume that objects must conform to our cognition. So instead of saying that A is B, for example "depression is the lack of signal substances in the brain" A is A because of our experiance (time) and what we've made it. It's an intersesting thought.