Post theme 6 reflection

This week I felt I had a better understanding of qualitative methods compared to the case study prior to the seminar. Since we had discussed quantitative methods in one of the previous weeks, we also compared it to qualitative methods, so this concept was not so new to me.

During the seminar a lot of my questions where answered about the case study research method. For example, do you have to combine both qualitative and quantitative methods when conducting a case study research? My initial answer would have been yes, but now I know it doesn't have to be that way. I also felt I got a better grasp on the actual steps when doing a case study, and also that the ideal number of cases is 4-10 (and the reason why it has to be 4 and not 3, was also kind of funny).

To summarize, I felt I got an overall better grasp of what a case study actually is, and what strengths and weaknesses it has.

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

Qualitative methods
The paper I read was  Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube by Lange, P. G. (2007). The reasearch analyses how different user behaviors reflects on social relationships among youth. It also reserches the "publicly private" and "privately public" behaviors.

The methods used included semi-structured interviews, fieldnotes on obsevations, analyses of videos and comments and examination of subscriptions and friendships. The interviews where conducted in different ways, ranging from face-to-face to instant messanging. This can of course give different outcomes because of the way the interviews was done (it's possible to think that it's easier to answer some questions when you don't see the face of the interviewer). The wide range of different methods used gives the researchers a lot of data to work with, wich can be both a good and a bad thing. There's no risk that you run out of data but on the other hand it can be hard to structure the resarch and obtain useful results.

Compared to when using a quantitative method, the questions asked where very open ended and promoted for discussion. The questions asked was also adapted depending on who they interviewed, which is also different from a quantitative method. This can also be argued wether it's a good or bad thing to adapt the questions between interviewees. It can make it harder to compare the results, which is already hard beacuse it is a qualitative study. But it can also make the interviews be more relevant, and you avoid spending time on irrelevant questions.

Case study
A case study is a case-oriented method, that is, it focuses on one or more cases (or scenarios) that is either found out in the field, or constructed by the researcher. When the case is decided or found, the research is conducted by gathering data through different ways or methods, for example, you can both combine qualitative and quantitative methods when doing a case study.

I chose the paper Social media competitive analysis and text mining: A case study in the pizza industry (2013). The study is trying to research an area that hasn't got so much attention, and no similar study has been conducted for this kind of case. Therefore, the study aims to explain a kind of untouched field. Which is both exciting but at the same time challenging.

In the study first quantitative data was manually collected through social media sites, then text-mining was applied to the companies Facebook and Twitter sites. The text mining was conducted in October, which apparently is the busiest month for the pizza industry. This means more data is gained, but the result may be biased compared to doing it in an "average" month. The methods used in the study gives the researchers a lot of data to work with, but with the disadvantage that it can be hard to efficiently analyze the results.

Post theme 5 reflection

This week we did not have a seminar but instead to different lectures on design research. Both lectures where intersting but quite different from each other!

The thing that stood out to me most was the importance of thinking about the actual problem you want to solve with your research. Finding a problem is not hard, but finding the right problem to solve is the tricky part. Actually finding the problem is probably a step we should spend more time on, beacuse if we solve the "wrong" problem, the resarch could become useless or at least overly complicated (I liked Haibo's example with the student and the bear, although a little cruel).

I also learned about the improtance of math when evaluating an idea. Even though it can seem hard at first to reduce something to just numbers, it can be possible and makes it much more easy to evaluate and compare it to your other ideas (especially when you have a lot of them).

The biggest thing I will remember from this theme is to consider both your problem and your ideas more methodologically and carefully, before you jump into trying to solve it!

Theme 5: Design Research

Reflections on "Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration"

When doing any kind of research or design research the most importan step is to consider "who is the target" and  "who am I designing it for"? This goes hand in hand with realizing the limitations and possibilites of the human body. In this paper, for example, when designing how the vibration system shall work we have to consider the dynamics of the human touch sense (it can not be too detailed, but it can not be too many vibrations either, since it will be annoying or painful for the user.) 

Further, to evaluate the system, using a set standard can be useful to both evaluate and compare it to other systems. For example in this study, using defined terms such as Effectiveness, Efficiency and Satisfaction. Using a well defines systems for evaluation makes it possible to asign numbers and calculate/measure how good the idea is.

The prototype of course plays a very important part in the research. If the resarch is built around a prototype then in one way it becomes the whole resarch. For example, if the prototype is built in a bad way, the research can become useless (at least for the specific questions you are trying to answer). 

Reflections on Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander's papers

A collaborative setting and a single user setting differs in a lot of aspects and provides their own difficulties and opportunities. In a collaborative setting more social aspects has to be considered, for example, how do the users react in this social setting, how do thery react to each other and how does it affect the research. People behave differently when alone or in a group, and that factor has to be considered when doing and designing the resarch (and that's not an easy task of course!).

Interestingly both quantitative and qualitative methods can be derived from one another, depending on how the resarch is conducted. If doing interviews (a qualitative method) the transcripts from the interviews can later be analyzed in  a quantitative way, for example by counting how many times a certain word was used.

Post theme 4 reflection

This week's seminar was a lot of fun, Olle held a presentation and we had group discussions as well. We discussed a lot about the differences between qualitative and quantitative methods, and their respective strong and weak points. We did some group exercises where we had to brain storm both the positive and negative aspects of the different methods. This made us try to come up with as many points as we could, some very far fetched but it made us think of outside the box (you could say it was more focus on quantity than quality from our side).

This was actually talked about on the lecture in the week after, but it was interesting considering that you can actually for get quantitative information from a qualitative study, and vice versa. I hadn't thought about it before, but it made me reconsider the relationship between qualitative and quantitative methods. They are separate things but can be derived from each other depending on the study conducted.

Post theme 3 reflection

The most interesting part about the seminar was discussing what theory really is. We had some different views in our group, and that was what made the discussion interesting. My belief was that theory is constructed and always needed when doing some kind of research. It's very hard to have an unbiased opinion, and theory is kind of biased in itself. The hard questions is - is it possible to do research without having any theoretical grounding? My answer would be no - but maybe that depends on how you define theory.

I really think theory is something that is easily overlooked and taken for granted when doing and reading a lot of research. Personally, I haven't thought much about it before, but this seminar made me think about it and reflect in what ways theory can influence both the research and the results. It's a more powerful tool than you might think first - but you really should choose the theoretical grounding with caution.

Theme 4: Quantitative methods

In the paper I read, Deviant Behavior in Computer-Mediated Communication: Development and Validation of a Measure of Cybersexual Harassment by Ritter, B. A. (2013) the quantitative method used is comprised by item generation, scale development & scale evaluation. The benefits are that a lot of questions can be generated and easily evaluated and used on a lot of people. The scale generated can be used to compare data easier. But a lot of detail is lost when using a quantitative method, since everything is reduced to numbers. There where a lot of steps to generate the items and later the scale, more than I thought.

Quantitative methods

When doing a quantitative research the method has to be very streamlined and there’s little space for answering the questions asked in a nuanced way. There´s also a risk that each participant interprets the questions in their own way, and their answer differs more or less than they should.

On the positive side, you could say that if there are enough participants these interpretations will be less likely to have an effect. Say half of the participants over exaggerate, and the other half understates their answers, then the those answers will cancel out each other, and the result will show a more balanced picture.

Qualitative methods

With a qualitative study you can get a more nuanced result, but it may be harder to decipher. The answers you get from the participants may be more truer (at least to them), but are harder to compare to the other participants. Also, since you don’t have as many participants, you may not get enough data for your research.

At the end of the day, there’s no answer to what method is best over all, but different methods can be better for particular studies, and the hard part is to decide what kind of method you should use for your research.

Post theme 2 reflection

This week was a bit harder for me to prepare compared to last week. The texts were harder to follow, especially Adorno & Horkheimer. Benjamin's text was a little easier to grasp and I found it more interesting. I also tried to look up some of the concepts used by the authors, for example nominalism and Marxism, to be able to understand the texts better.

When reading the texts I tried to find the differences and similarities between them. They had a lot in common, but also some differences. But since I had a hard time to understand Adorno & Horkheimer it was difficult to tell exactly.

Under the seminar I learned a lot of things I didn't understand from reading by my own. For example Adorno and Horkheimer's view of the enlightenment. It was hard to follow their text because they change opinion under the course of their book.

Theme 3: Research and Theory

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC)

The JCMC is a web-based journal focusing on, as they put it, “social science research on communicating with computer-based media technologies”. The works published ranges from communication, business, education, political science, psychology, media studies, etc.

Social Networking Sites: Their Users and Social Implications – A Longitudinal Study

This paper was publishes in the JCMC in 2012 and aims to examine the effects the usage of Social Networking Sites (SNS) has on its users.  An important aspect in this study is that it compares SNS users with non users. The findings suggest that SNS users on average score higher in the social capital dimensions: face-to-face interaction, number of acquaintances and bridging capital. The research also reports higher loneliness in SNS users. In additions to this the study also identifies 5 types of SNS users: Sporadics, Lurkers, Socializers, Debaters and Advanced users.

The study argues that there is no gradient relationship between the user types, because each type has different characteristics. I find it hard to believe that there would be no gray-scale in between the groups even though general patterns can be found. The distinct user types found is based on Brandtzaeg’s (2010) theories and it’s not impossible to think that the results may be influenced by the theory used.

Theory

In short, theory is constructed knowledge explaining the world and relations between different objects and phenomenon. Theory is not raw knowledge or data. There are different types of theories, depending on how they are constructed and what they aim to explain or do.  This makes it difficult to define what theory is exactly, and is the reason there are different views on what really should be considered a theory.

The theories in the study mostly consist of EP (explanation and prediction) theory. As already mentioned, the different user types derived from the results was based on the theories by Brandtzaeg (explaining what the user groups are, and predicting the outcome based on their attributes).

There are both good and bad aspects with such a theory. Without having any it would be hard to make sense of the results and interpret it, making it hard to come up with any conclusions. But the use of a theory that explains and also predicts the outcome makes the results biased, and different conclusions can be made depending on what theory you use. In a way, theory is both beneficial and limiting at the same time. Without it, it would be impossible to make sense of the world and establish any logical connections. But what if the theory you use is false? Depending on what kind of research you are doing, your theory can be either proves wrong – or your results will be tainted by your preconceptions, without you realizing it.

Post Seminar 1 Reflection

The theme for the first seminar was very interesting even though the texts, especially Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was very hard to read. I had no problem to get through Plato's text, and I actually read all of it without skipping any pages. But Kant's text was very hard to understand, I kept reading the same sentence over and over again. In the end I gave up and watched a couple of youtube-videos explaining his theories and after that I finally understood something.

Before the seminar I felt I had a pretty good understanding of the theories (very limited but still). I had prepared a couple of questions which got answered at the seminar and I tried to participate as much as I could. I think almost everyone at the seminar said at least one thing. The discussion got pretty interesting and we talked about a lot of other things not directly related to this weeks assignment, which I think was good. I know a lot of people think the theories are very hard to understand (I'm one of them), so I had to stay very focused and listen carefully to be able to follow the discussion.

Even though I knew the (very) basics of Kant's theories I gained some new insights at the seminar, for example, did Kant really say that we cannot know anything about the 'real' world? In my first blog post I thought the answer was 'yes', but it turned out the answer was more complicated than that. Since we know, if we believe Kant, that we structure our perceptions in the 12 categories, we actually know something about the real world. Basically.

Theme 2: Critical media studies

This is my reflection of the texts Dialectic of Enlightenment by Adorno & Horkheimer (1944) and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin (1936). Now with pictures.

Enlightenment vs myth

Adorn & Horkheimer, from now on A&H, talks about enlightenment in opposition to myth (later we will see that this opposition is actually false, in a way), where enlightenment on one side stands for the known, the measurable and objectivity, and myth is, on the other hand, the immeasurable and the unknown. While both myth and enlightenment are attempts to understand the world, myth tries to imitate and relate to nature, and accepts that there are unknowable qualities to it. Enlightenment tries to rule nature and determine the outcomes, giving us objective knowledge of the world, but at the same time putting us above and further away from nature. A&H argues that the reasoning of enlightenment creates a single system for the world, and to do that all objects must be made similar and abstract, which clashes with the nominalist view that no such abstract things exist. With enlightenment subjectivity is lost, things are reduced to the same abstract concept. This thought kind of goes hand in hand with Benjamin's text where he talks about an object's aura and which is lost in reproduction, but more on that later.

In the end, and I’m not sure I’m following A&H’s logic here, myth is already enlightenment and enlightenment is myth as well. They argue that myth tries to understand and explain nature in order to control it, hence it is enlightenment (enlightenment also tries to control nature, remember?). This argument is kind of easy to follow. But why is enlightenment reverting to myth? One argument could be that the more object-focused we become (through the enlightenment), we ourselves are reduced to objects. Thus, enlightenment has imitating qualities just like myth has. As a result, myth and enlightenment is really standing in a false opposition.

Aura and nominalism vs reproduction

In Benjamin’s essay he writes that technical advancements has made reproduction of art easier, changing our perception of art and art itself. This process makes art lose its aura (that he defines as the unique distance to and object). Using a Marxist dialectic approach, Benjamin talks about superstructure and substructure (base). The substructure consists of the ‘material things’, i.e technique and economy, everything related to production. These are the same thing that makes up the base of the Marx’s dialectic as well, which is a kind of materialist view. The superstructure the other fluff, art for example.

As I see it, the aura is what makes the object unique, it stands for subjectivity and quality. With the reproduction of objects (art in this case), the object is reduced to an abstract thing, giving us quantity and sameness. According to nominalism, abstract objects do not exist, there can only be particular and individual things. As I see it, when reproducing art and reducing it to an abstract thing, it goes against the nominalist view of the world. Taking an individual and subjective piece and turning it into something objective and abstract is working against that idea. I hope it makes sense.

A&H vs Benjamin

Since all three are from the Frankfurt School there’s a lot of resemblance between them, with the influence from Marx’s ideas. Despite all the similarities, I got the feeling that Benjamin had an overall more positive view of the change in culture and art, seeing both the good and the bad sides with mass production. A&H seems more pessimistic and think we are all being brainwashed. I’m positive you could give a more nuanced view of their ideas, but that’s the main difference that I see. 

I wish I had more time to really understand and analyze the texts but this was the best I could do. Thanks for reading!

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

So, the question is basically, are we shaped by experience – or is our perceptions of the world shaped by us.

If you listen to Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, the answer is the latter. Prior to reading his work I would easily agreed with the empiricist camp. Personally, I like the idea of every person being born as a blank slate, shaped and molded by our experience from the world around us. But the more I read about Kant’s opinion – I’m inclined to agree with him. It makes sense that we are born with innate ideas if you think about it. How would you otherwise explain, for example, our concept of infinity – where did that idea come from? It would be hard to argue that any empirical study could give us that idea. Kant’s theory about a priori cognition also explains why we cannot think about objects without space or time (try to do it, it’s kind of hard), which I’ll also admit makes a lot of sense. If we agree with Kant’s theories about how we ourselves mold all objects with our innate filter, how can we really know what the world looks like? The answer is that we can’t, and suddenly another question arises; does it really matter if we can’t experience the true, unknown world?

While the theory might not change our everyday lives, it’s still thought-provoking and interesting for the person who’s into metaphysics and philosophy.

In Plato’s the Theaetetus, in between the chapters of men having babies, a similar rationalist view is presented when Socrates and Theaetetus is discussing whether perception is knowledge. In short, man is the judge of his perceptions – if the wine is bitter or sweet depending on the state of the man drinking it, how can we be certain about the true nature of the wine itself? Similarly to Kant’s view, this is also a critique against the empiricist opinion. Although a moderately entertaining read the most impressing part of the Theaetetus is the foreshadowing it does for theories like Kant’s. Some say Kant was ahead of his time, then consider when the Theatetus was written! 

Of course, both the empiricism and rationalism can be equally criticized and discussed, and in my opinion the questioning and dispute between the theories are more interesting than presenting a definite answer.

Thank you for reading!