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.

PRE Seminar 1 Blogg

Kant - Critique of Pure Reason

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.

Kant wishes to change the way we think about the universe. Why things are what they are or percieved what they are. Time and space are what they are because of our experiance of them. Instead we must challenge the thoughts of how we see the world to see it from no ones point of view. I think what i am trying to say and what Kant is saying is that we have to consider the fact the we are human and all the things we see is because of our earlier impressions and senses. So when he talks about objects must conform to our cognition we should think about the object and bear in mind why we see it in that way because of our experiances. To see the true object as it is we must block out those experiances and let the object "conform to our cognition".

Plato - Theaetetus  

Socrates and Theatetus discuss if Knowledge is perception and 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?

I understand this as it's not the organs, the ears and eyes that that process the what they take in. It's only a tool for the brain to recieve information. Then it's up to the brain to make use of that information in what sense it will. And the way it operates is based on earlier perceptions of senses and is put to relative comparisons in terms of those.

And in what way is it correct to say that Soctrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?
Empiricism is a theory which states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experiance


I think it's directed in the way that since our own perception of what we see and hear is not knowledge we can't gather it through our own senses. It must come from the observation of gathered impartial perceptions like the result of empirical studies. However a question remains that if you can't say that your own perceptions is knowledge then why should another persons perceptions be? Even if a large amount of people have percieved the same thing it's still just a sum of perception. And if we gather all those perceptions we could only say what those large amount of people have percieved not if it's truly the truth.