Final blog post

In this course I think the structure was very good and made it so you gain a lot of knowledge. I think for we it was really good to first by my self read texts and then reflect on them. That started my own thinking. Then at the seminar when we started to discuss things I got a better understanding of the thoughts that had poped up during my own reflection. But not only that thanks to the seminar new questions occurred that I  had not even thought of that gave me a new perspective on my own thoughts and also got me to see things from different angels. 

In this course we started out with at  philosophical direction. Where we read texts that were very complex and abstracts to understand. This part was a very good start to the course. In my education overall there has not been so much philosophical thinking and thats why I thought this was really good. We discussed what knowledge really is how we can really know when something can be named as knowledge. We also discussed how to see things, that we never are a blank paper and that it is close to impossible to have a non objective point to things. Everything that we analyzes and look at we do from or specific objective point of view. One thing that I thought was good was when we read and discussed about that to really understand someone when they talk or when you read a text that someone has written you have to put your self inside of the same environment as that person. If you read a text from someone that was in a war you need to put you self in that environment to truly understand the meaning of the text. You also need to understand the person that has written it. I think this is a very important learning and something that needs to bee be narrated to people. I often feel like me and other people judge or analyze people often from or own perspective and from or own point of view when we try to understand someone or something. This is misleading and we need to try to understand people by trying to understand what they are saying by understanding who they are and what there objectives are. 

We also discussed what a theory is and how it is structured. That you with facts and data comes up with theories. Theory can be very hard to define and when you compare it to hypotheses it can in some cases be hard to divide them up. From theory you come up with hypotheses and from there you can start a study and come up with your own theories. But you can also turn it, because from a lot of hypotheses you can come up with a theory. This is what makes it so hard to divide and I think thats why this course is really good. I think that you are not suppose to really know where the line is drawn you just need to know what the different things are. How they are defined can be really different from case to case. 

I also find it really good when we first started to think about what a quantitative research is and what is it you can gain from it, and what the obstacles are. This theme was something pretty familiar the same thing with the theme design research. But it was familiar because I have been working with this type of reachers and that is just an implication that it is something that is good for me to reflect on. There is a great chans that I will work with something like this again. What I taught was really good about the theme quantitative research was when we in the last theme we reflected on the difference between qualitative and case study research. Case study was nothing that I had been working with my self but when we had that theme I realized that I have read a lot of case studies and not really been reflecting on what type of study it was. The seminar on this theme really helped me to gett a grip on what a case study was. But like almost every other theme there was a hard to draw a clear line when to define something a case study. 

I think the last theme was a very good wrap up. I got to think about the different types of studies that can be done. When to use what and what you actually got out if them. I realized that a case study can be done to find a problem that you don't see. A problem that you know is there but you can not really find specifik what the problem is. When the problem is found you can use quantitative research to find a solution to it. 

Overall this course gave me a better understanding of what the different things are. How you can attack a problem you want to solv or maybe find. Things that are important to have in mind when you are about to start a study. This course would have been great to have before I wrote my theses. But I think that if I had taken this course before the first theses I would not been able to really understand the different things in this course. It was easier to adapt to the different things in the course when I had own experience to compare to and reflect upon. I think this course is really good to give you a better understanding why different elements are important and what differentiates one from another. I also think that it can bee good to from time to time after working with different studies to reflect upon the themes of this course, I think that will help the process. 

Reflection Theme 6 - Qualitative and case study research

On the last weeks theme ”Qualitative and case study research” at the seminarium we got divided up into groups. My group discussed a lot how to define a case study and also what can be called a case study. One way we defined a case study was to say that a case study is adapted to find the problem. It is often that you in a company or anywhere know that something is wrong but don’t really know the source of the problem. Thanks to a case study where you look at a lot of data and compare it you can find the unknown problem and then solve it.

This got us to start discussing however other texts we had read or written maybe where case studies and not qualitative methods that we once thought.

One other way to defining it was that you thru the case study find the problem and the with qualitative methods can you understand the problems. When we started to talk about this we realized that a lot of the decisions that you make in life are based on a very small case study.

Theme 5 - Design Research (Reflection)

This weeks team was about evaluating design from prototyping. I find this topic very important since a lot of the work that I have done during my studies has been working around creating a product or testing existing products. I have found that in many existing problem things can be changed, and that a lot of people complains about the same things. What I also have find is that when first testing a product myself I find some problems with it and things that can be better. Then when I test the same product on other people that are not in the team with me, new problems and things that needs to be changed comes up. This is one common mistake that I think people do when they are developing products. They relay to much on there own thoughts and expertise's and by that misses out important things that are wrong and needs to change. 

This week team also  gave me a good things to have in mind then writhing a thesis. There is a lot of different way of looking at a problem. First is the problem that is given. Then looking at the problem form different angels will redefine the problem and by that you can solve it. Haibo took an example of a student and a professor that were being chased by a bear. They were to close to the bear to run away from it. The problem is how to get away from the bear. There is no solution to that problem since the can’t outrun the bear. But then the student realized that the bear will probably be satisfied with one of them. So now the problem was no longer how to outrun the bear it was how to outrun the professor and that’s a problem that can be solved. 

Theme 6 - Qualitative and case study research

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

The text is about the connectedness experienced in computer-mediated relationships.

Small things that can have an impact on what we think about other people. They are doing

two studies however we feel connections to other people because some factors. First they

try if similarity in activities has an impact on the connectedness between people. In this

study they have 24 collage students that are going to every day text to the administrators

of the test what they are doing.They should text a number from 1-5 that are different types

of activities. Before the test starters they got a name of one other participant that also is

going to do the same test, and during the test every time the text the administrators they

will get a text back that says what the other participant is doing. 

The think in this test is that the other participant is not for real. There is a system were 12

of the participants will get a lot of similarity from the ”other participant” and the other 12 will

not. After the test is done they will ask all the 24 participants if they felt Connectedness,

Intimacy  and if they would like to meet the other participant. 

They they did yet another study, the concept is the same but they this time did not only get

the name of the other participant they also got a profile with gender, age, academic focus,

and three favorite pastimes. The profile were also costume designed to bee similar and not

similar with the real participants depending on what group the participants were in. 

The benefit from using the method is that it gives a very valid result. They first finds out what is factors that can have an impact on our connectedness between people and then they tries them out in two different studies. The limitation is that it can only be tested on a smaller amount of people and it requires a lot o work to conduct all the data. 

What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
I find that it is really good to do qualitative methods on topic like this. When you cant really tell the participants what you are testing. I also think that it is a good example of trying one aspect of a question at the same time as trying the other side. Then it is clear that the things that they are testing has an impact in that case.  

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the

use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

The limitation is that there can be other things that can impact. Things that they never asked about or tested.

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

When you know that there is something that is wrong but you don’t really whats the problem. It is good to use when you want to get a bigger picture on things. Taking in a lot of different data and looking at it comparing it one to another it helps you to maybe see the problem from another angel and that may help you solve what the problem really is about. It helps you come up with a theory/ a ground to work with.

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.

I think this study follows all the steps in the Eisenhardt table more or less. It has a good definition on the research questions. They are looking at three case and the comparing them to one and other. This is done well and they make a good analyses on the three cases. 

Theme 4 reflection

During the seminar this week we discussed qualitative and quantitative methods. This was done by dividing us into groups. In the groups we discussed the advantage with qualitative and quantitative and Olle that held the seminar made it into a competition between the groups. 

What I got from the seminar is that qualitative methods is good to use when you want a deeper understanding in a question, when you need to ask more advanced questions about a topic that is more complex, you can read and ask about peoples feelings and thoughts. 

Quantitative methods is good because it is easy to make graphs, when the questioner is done it does not need a lot of extra work to get information from at lot of people, it is easy to compare the different results. 

After that we discussed the advantages with web vs paper questionaries 

With the web it is easy to get it out to a lot of different people. In the long run that makes it cheaper then doing it on paper the questionnaire is easy to get graphs on and it goes fast. It dose not get more work the more people that are answering. But with web there can be technical issues, the layout needs to work on different web browsers, computer/media screens.

Theme 5: Design research

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?
Depending on what product you want to evaluate different methods can be used. In the article they tested the users effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Three factors that were important for there product. It is important to know what will be the limitation of a product and what will drive the users to buy it knowing this is easy to know how to test the product.

2. What role will prototypes play in research?
Prototypes roll in research is to give a picture of what the design will look like.
When designing something you can never really know what the costumers will like about it. Sometimes you as the designer are to involved into the product that you can’t really see it from a costumers eyes. When designing something there is a lot of things to think of so it is easy to forget about some elements.
When doing a prototype you get to try the product out on a real costumer. Thing maybe are to hard for the costumer to understand, or there is some design issue and so on. It is a good way of testing the product out in a stage were the product still can be changed. One new example is the new iPhone, a short time after the release a lot of the costumers started complain that the phone easily bended in the pocket. It is hard to know however the developers knew about this and did nothing about it. But looking at it now they should have. iPhone probably did some prototype that they tried out and maybe still missed this think. But this kind of bad designing problems is one good example of what you are trying to find when prototyping and testing the product at the stage were changes still can be made.

3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
When creating a product a lot of things needs to work. There needs to be a market, there needs to be technology that can create the product or material etc. The proof of concept prototype is when you tries the product if it really work, if it’s going to be feasible. This is done so that product that no one whats don't get developed.


4. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
There can be a lot of deferent characteristics of a prototype, it can by on paper just a drawing, made as a fully done product done with no features, a website, a app, a first draft on the real product. The prototype is not the real product and can be on every step and level during the creation of the new product. The limitation of prototypes is that it is very good to do it a lot but it takes a lot of time and money.

5. How can design research be communicated/presented?
I think it is a good way of showing the product as a prototype. But it is important to choose the right type of prototype. Sometimes if the the real product is missing some important features and does not look like it should then it maybe is better to just draw a prototype to visualize it. To make the audience understand how the real product will really look like.

Reflections on Theme 3 (After the Seminar)

In this weeks theme we were suppose to read two texts Gregor, S. (2006). The Nature of Theory in Information Systems and Sutton, R. I. & Staw, B. M. (1995). What Theory is Not. We were also suppose to choose another text by ourselves. The text that I choose was Thomas J. Johnson, Credibility of Social Network Sites for Political Information Among Politically Interested Internet Users. I always like to choose my own texts, then I can choose the topic that I find most interesting and then the reading gets easier. 

During the seminar we all went thru or texts. First in small groups, In my group we discussed a lot what was the difference between hypotheses and a theory and everyone told what theories there text had used. After we were done in the groups we started to talk about the texts in full class. This gave a new perspective on what theory really is. Thing that were said during the seminar was the a hypothesis is when I am wondering something and a theory is when a get a reason/answer to something. When looking at that explanation it is pretty easy to divid hypothesis from theory. But knowing that and also knowing that a big amount of hypothesis together can create a theory (this was also mentioned during class) makes it really hard to divide the two. 

Theme 4: Quantitative research

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

The text I have chose is ”The ‘‘Nasty Effect:’’ Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies”. They are saying that today we are able to disseminate information to a big crowd of people. This gives the opportunity for small subjects like nanotechnology. A technology that are pretty new and very complex, meaning that not a lot of people have a great understanding about it this small subject can still get discussed with the help of internet and the commenting opportunities. 

The thing that this paper if trying to find out is however the different comments that are placed under text or articles can effect the readers. Some of the comments are not even true but what impact do they have, and how dose different comments effects us differently. 

To find out this the methodology they they have used is that they have sent out a survey asking the participants about there media use habits, science knowledge and efficacy, and nanotechnology support and other things. The participants got to read a blogpost about nanotechnology there. There was eight different blog posts with different comments on it. Comments that were civil vs not civil. Were a good example of an uncivil comment is ‘‘If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you’re an idiot.’’

After the participants had read the blogpost and the comments they were asked to answer questions. Questions like if the comment were civil and from a 1-10 scale if the participant agreed with the comment under the text, where 1 = ‘‘Do not agree at all’’ and 10 = ‘‘Agree very much’’

They also measured the risk perception on a 1-5 scale asking ”On the issue of nanotechnology, do you think the benefits outweigh the risks, the risks outweigh the benefits, or the risks and benefits are about the same?’’. They also measured age, gender and Socioeconomic status. The socioeconomic status was measured thru level of education and family income. They also measured religiosity on a 1-10 scale by the question ‘‘How much guidance does religion provide in your everyday life?” 

They also measured the media use of the participants with three questions ‘‘How much attention do you pay to news stories about the following topics when you read the newspaper, either in print or online?’’,  ‘‘How much attention do you pay to news stories about the following topics when you watch television news, either on a traditional television or in online sources (such as Hulu or websites of television networks, such as ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox)?” and ‘‘How much attention do you pay to news about the following topics when you go online for news and information? Please exclude online versions of print newspapers or television shows and answer this question based on your usage of blogs, websites, and online-only newspapers.’’

The last thing they measured was the familiarity of the topic (nanotechnology) with the question ‘‘How much have you heard, read, or seen about nanotechnology?’’

What I think makes the methodology good is that they have used a lot of impact factors when getting there results. But with every survey there can of course be more impact factors that can be relevant for the result. They have backed up there chosen impact factors, but it is easy to find information that supports that this and that impact factor is important and something can then be easily forgotten. 

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

What I learned from reading the text is that you can very easy get statistics on everything. But that this statistics can be hard do really understand. First there needs to be a lot of participants to really get a good and quantitative result. Second there need to be an understanding of what different impact factors there can be.  

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

I think that the way to the information were conducted was good, but as I wrote you can never really know what impact factors that people have when they are answering a survey. 

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?
You can in a easy way get an general overview of what people think of specific topic/question. But since you can never really know how the participants understood the question or if the questions that you asked pointed the participants to one direction. This gives an limitation to the question and the question therefore need to be very simple. 

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

By getting qualitative information you can get a deeper understanding in one subject or topic. You can also get a better understanding of who the participants are, and by that get a better understanding of what might affect their response. 

Reflections on Theme 2 (After the Seminar)

This weeks theme was about “Critical Media Studies”. I have read the texts Adorno & Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and Walter Benjamin’s essay ”The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity”. 

The same thing as last week I found it quite hard to understand the texts. I like after reading the texts to search on them on the internet. To see how people understood them or maybe more what reflections people had after reading them. 

What I have learned from this weeks team is that to get a better understanding on what a text is about the text needs to be read in the same context as it is written. That is very interesting and I can agree with it. To truly understand what someone is feeling and to understand the text as it is written, a background story and understanding needs to be applied. I think this is very important not only when reading a text but in all kind of situations. To understand what another person is trying to mediate I need to see things thru this persons eyes. 

Due to mandatory lecture in one other class I missed this weeks seminar. I think that is very sad and that I because of that missed out on good reflections and better understanding about this weeks theme. 

Theme 3: Research and theory

I have chosen the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. This journal has a Impact Factor: 2.019. The journal is peer-reviewed scholar journal and  writes about education, political science, media studies and different others disciplines. 

The research paper that I have decided to work on is ”Credibility of Social Network Sites for Political Information Among Politically Interested Internet Users”. The authors are Thomas J. Johnson and Barbara K. Kaye. What they are writing about is the credibility that we have for social network sites (SNS). They are looking at this from a point of view is politicians should or can use SNS. If people really trust what they see or read on SNS. They say that 

”Credibility is a judgment made by the user based on a host of factors, including believability, 

accuracy, fairness, depth, trustworthiness, bias, completeness, reliability”

Researchers have created models on how that helps to undertand and explain how individuals determine a sites credibility. Many of those sites are based on the model that the credibility on a site is based on the users ability to evaluate the site and also on how motivated the users are to make sure that the information on the site is credible. 

The method they used to find out the credibility of social networks sites was that they looked into a lot of different studies that takes up different ways people uses SNS sites. On SNS sites there is a lot of different tools to use when spreading information. Like the chat function, posting something in you feed, linking an article, creating group to discuss a specifik subject and so on.  How credible this different tools are is determined by different factors. To give an example, if a Facebook user only have people they he/she know and have meet in real life on Facebook, then this person is more likely to believe in the things that are being posted on his/her’s wall. 

The method used to collect the information about reliance of SNS for political information and if the political information is more or less credible if posted on social networks compared to other online tools that can be used is done thru data collection. They sender out a survey 2weeks before and 2weeks after the elections in the states 2008 on SNS sites to political interested internet users. The users themselves after responding to the survey got the option to send the survey to someone else. 

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

A theory is something that explains why different things happens. If the circumstance are like this, than A will probably happen. If the circumstance are in this way then B is more likely to happen. Theory are not facts and data. It is thru facts and data that you come up with theories. 

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 have above explained the theories that was used in this paper. I who'd say that this theory is a Explanation and prediction (EP) 

”Says what is, how, why, when, where, and what will be.

Provides predictions and has both testable propositions and causal explanations.” 

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

In this case were there is hard to measure the ”real truth” I think they did a well job by explaining what impact factors that can change the results and change the mindset of people. But it is hard to really tell when it comes the SNS since it is a medium that is fast changing and the importance of it as well.  

Reflection, theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

I found the texts very hard to understand. It took very long time to get thru them and when I had read them it still was not really clear to me what the big picture was. To get a better understanding I searched to web for other people writing about the text. That helped a lot for me to understand but it was still very blurry.
Before the seminar I read thru some of the other students blogs to get a better understanding. It was really good. At the seminar not so many people spoke, that got me to realize that this text and this philosophical way of thinking is really hard. I thought that the seminar professor was really good. Everything is very complex and it feel like you can twist and turn everything and there is no real answer to anything.

Theme 2: Critical media studies

1 Dialectic of Enlightenment

What is ”Enlightenment”?

It is a way of thinking. It describes how we should make everything into knowledge and reason. If we don't then things will be myths and/or imaginary. Why this needs to be done is because things with myths and imaginary things is that they are blurry and can therefore frighten us, leave us in fear and make us not think as clear as we can. By make everything into knowledge we can advance the way we are thinking.  

What is ”dialectic”?

It is that thru knowledge and reason disagreements can be solved.

It is when to sides have different opinions and together they can find out the truth. By dividing up the subject into positive and negative sides they can look and discuss the subject. By having an opened mind and being able to change their opinion, by sorting out what is not true the truth to the question can be found.

What is "nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

It is when you find out the truth thru knowledge and not thru the myths. When searching and information and knowledge to find out what is what and not just make a assumption based on myths and what you think it is but don’t really have the facts on it. Saying that only objects can be divided up. For example two chairs they can be divided into a group and you can distinguish them from the group of flowers. Flowers and chairs are objects so that you can divide up. But you can not divide up one chair from another based on that one is hard to sit on and the other is not. Thats a feeling and can’t therefore never be knowledge. Thats why it is so important in the text, to see the difference.  

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

A myth is what enlightenment is not. Is things that we believe is true but don't have any sources to back it with it is something that is illusion and imaginary.  We can not really know what is true or not in a myth.

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

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 substructure are all the things that are the main core. The superstructure are things thats built around the substructure. Superstructure are things like culture, religion. laws. Things that are really important and that people make decisions based on. But to have a superstructure there needs to be substructure to built the culture and religion on.

As en example if the superstructure are the laws in a city, then the substructure are the city that is needed for the laws to exist. The substructure is the material needed for the superstructure.

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 it does when looking at photographs and movies. Everyone can today take a picture or get a copy of it. Everyone can make a movie and the access of a movie is really easy. The package a movie is wrapped in makes it easy to understand the information or the meaning of the movie. When watching a movie you don’t need to create you own pictures on how things looks compare to when you read a book. This has made art and culture easier to understand and I think that this is an effect of enlightenment. Where everything needs to be understood and very clear.

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).

That the perception are naturally is that we as humans take in information differently. We see things from different point of views, we feel different feelings about the same things. So the perception is naturally in one way if that was not true everyone would feel the same way. But it can also be historically meaning that historically changes in culture or religion can make the perceptions change. That because of this changes people changed their senses to the same ”direction” and the change is then no naturally.  Benjamin refers to the stature of Venus as an historically perception.

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

The term aura means the uniqueness of objects something that can not be changed or replaced. Something that is real and does not change based on the distant or time and space. An object can not lose it’s aura. Al natural objects have an aura, they are unique. But when it comes to art it is different. The way of looking at art is determined from history and culture so the aura differs from natural objects.

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

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

My opinion in what Kant want’s to say is that we can not trust how we see things thru or own eyes. Or cognition is based on objects and thats why the author say that we can not really trust how we see and percept time and room. Nothing says that the way of looking at things and thinking of them needs to be something that we can se (a object).  

Today or cognition complies with the objects Kant say, he thinks for us to learn more we need to change the way we see things. Instead of making or cognition complies with the object, the  object should compile with or cognition. Meaning that we may see something in one way but for us to truly understand  we need to se things thru the objects perspectives. So we base things on this assumptions and then make it knowledge but when looking at Kant’s point to it we can not call it knowledge since we can not be truly sure if it is knowledge or just our way of seeing things.  

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

What we see and what we hear is not coming from the eyes and the ears. It is just tools for us to collect information. The collected information then goes to the mind. The mind makes us understand the information and in some case it is not understandable.

Just because we see something or hear something that does not mean that we understand it. For us to make something understandable we need to fist collect the information and then based on old knowledge we can make something out of it. 

When I say old knowledge I am meaning collected information about different things from a lot of different people. The more of the same information that we collect about the same thing will make us believe that it is knowledge and what they are believing is the truth. 

This is the way that we do empiricism today. We collect a lot of information from different persons and what the majority things are often described as the knowledge. Like if a flower smells good or not. If a majority say it dose than we are more likely to believe that it those.