Theme 4. Quantitative research

I have chosen to take a closer look at the article “From echo chamber to persuasive device? Rethinking the role of the Internet in campaigns” by Cristian Vaccari from the journal New Media & Society (IF: 1,824), published in the issue of February 2013.

The paper is questioning the claim most e-campaigning literature does; that Internet can’t change political attributes, just reinforce them. The author looks at how e-campaigns has changed through time, how people use political websites in taking in information and also if the people afterwards share or publish something connected to what they have read.

This he has investigated through the receive-accept-sample (RAS) theory. Which means that the viewer needs to receive the message and accept it to be able to change it’s own opinion.

I am a bit confused on what is a quantitative method and not. The definition of quantitative research is “The quantitative researcher asks a specific, narrow question and collects a sample of numerical data from participants to answer the question. The researcher analyzes the data with the help of statistics. The researcher is hoping the numbers will yield an unbiased result that can be generalized to some larger population.” This paper uses mainly two different methods in finding data. The author conduct 31 different interviews with people connected to different online political campaigns in the US. The author says that it was qualitative research but one could argue, based on the amount of interviews (31) and that the research area was quite narrow (responsible for e-campaigning in the biggest political parties in the US) that it was a quantitative method too. The interviews form the base of some of the statistics and numbers in the paper. This is why I’m not sure if this count as a quantitative method or not. But if it is, it is a good one since he got relevant data and statistics to his research and he enabled to connect the data to the theory.

The other method the author uses is collecting data from another research instance, summing it up and calculating some of the data making it comparable and usable with the data in the paper. I guess this does not count as a quantitative method since the author has not conducted the data gathering by himself. But he has on the other hand looked it up, transformed it and published it in a way making it relevant for his research.

The hardest part using quantitative methods is to know if the responders can represent the mass of the people the researcher want to have facts about. But the same problem one can have with qualitative methods since it is hard to know if the interviews will represent the people categorized in that group if the group is not very little.

In the paper named: “Physical Activity, Stress, and Self-Reported

Upper Respiratory Tract Infection" it showed the importance of describing the method used when doing a quantitative method on who has taken part of the survey and answered the questions. It is hard to take all opinions into account when sorting out those who don’t have an email account and those who work in one place since they can’t send their replies in the questionnaire. In the specific research done in the paper the self-reporting of the URTI felt like a factor that could, if not done correctly determined for the respondent, be interpreted different depending on who answered. But the fact that they have taken all this measures to make the result as trustworthy as possible makes it a better quantitative research than it would have been not using or discussion those factors. Qualitative methods are good when it comes to information from people that might needs to be dug up. In interviews it is possible to get more precise information and one can use follow-up questions, which is not that often possible to do when using quantitative methods, especially if the respondents are anonymous.

What I've learned - Theme 3. Research and theory

The first discussion seminar that I went to, my group focused a lot about what was good and what was not good in the papers that we had chosen. One of our papers did not use references in a good way, which affected the reliability on the facts presented in it.

We chose to focus on one paper that the critique mainly consisted of the loose definition of “original content” that the whole study was founded on, and therefore the conclusions the author made was doubtable. It would also be hard basing other research on the paper since it did not clearly define what it had used as a definition when researching the area. It showed the importance of a good base. I guess that when starting a research, the question that you are aiming to solve might not be solved if the focus are to much on the question, and not on how to build the background and thinking in advance on troubles that might come later in the research. The paper is not relying on a good research question to become good or not, it is relying on a good base to support the question and the findings of the research.

Something that got stuck in my mind after the first seminar was the teacher’s saying that to write a report about why people for example don’t use a type of software could be as interesting as investigating why they use it. For a media technology student that has read HCI, that would be such an interesting thing to do during the final thesis.

During the second seminar we discussed theory, what it is and how it is defined.

Before the seminar I had a hard time wrapping my head around the term “theory”.  I guess it some how got me a bit confused looking at it translated from the Swedish and French languages point of view. Now, I wouldn’t say that I am a hundred percent sure of how to define it, but I get the picture. I find the most interesting is the transformation from theory to truth, and the opposite; from truth to theory. They are deeply connected but they are indeed different. I guess that in the beginning one see problems and dilemmas as that they have one and only one true answer. This is confirmed by the 12 year school before graduation since it there shows to be only one correct answer to all the problems you see. In a math test for example, each question has a correct answer. From this perspective we are raised and looking at our teachers and parents always expecting them to hand us the answer or at least help us find them.

Imagine in school, instead of the teacher saying “No, that’s not true” saying “Well, that is a great theory, but there is another theory that proves to be more correct, so lets go with that one for now”. But maybe it is to hard for a kid to wrap their head around the truth not being a definite truth but only one theory that is the truth until another theory comes and are proven more true than the theory that was the truth before.

Theme 3: Research and theory

The journal

I’ve chosen to take a look at the Robotics and Autonomous Systems journal with an impact factor of 1.158. I chose the article “A survey of robot learning from demonstration” published in 2009.

The aim of the article is to examine how robots learn the best and how to implement it on a high level. This is one of the main factors that separate humans from robots that humans can interpret situations on a bigger scale than robots and from that withdraw knowledge from that information. That is called experience based learning, and that is not what this article is about This article focuses on how robots learn from demonstrations (kind of monkey see, monkey do) and they map and structure the different choices given during an implementation of designing this type of robots. It is not only focused on gathering the different input information types it is also discussing the different implementation methods. It also discusses its limitations and future research areas connected to the article.

The first part is about gathering the examples and the second part is about deriving them.

My first thought was that the authors is not inventing something new, just testing different methods from other studies and to map them all out, creating a structure of different theories in LfD design and forming a base for future researchers to stand on improving and inventing new methods.

Under the facts about why this (Learning from demonstration) is a important and relevant study, the authors do not refer to actual facts and provides the reader little of trustworthiness in their statements. It does neither clearly explain the positive expects using these methods, only referring to the fact that it opens the robot creating business up for more people than just the robot experts, which I’m not sure that I can agree upon. The positive comments I came to think about reading this article is the analysis that the authors share with the reader. It is a deep and furrow analyze with many factors included.

The Questions

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

Theory could be many things. As stated in the article “THE NATURE OF THEORY IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS”, even the word’s meaning in a dictionary is not precise and lacks a persistent explanation. Thus to answer what theory is, isn’t possible with just one word or one sentence. More over the term “theory” is changing depending on what area of studies it belongs to are within and who are referring to the word.

Within theory there is five parts, dependent on each other; (1) theory for analyzing, (2) theory for explaining, (3) theory for predicting, (4) theory for explaining and predicting, and (5) theory for design and action.

Theory is not references, data, variables, diagrams and hypotheses as many believe. Using these five incorrectly as theory might get the readers to think that the text does not contain enough theory.

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?

In the paper I have selected they use the “Design and action” theory. This I decide based on the fact that the paper not predict anything, only discuss and compare the information withdrawn from other studies made by others. It is an implementation discussion on how to design robots, thus it is the aim of the paper.

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

One fact that is negative in choosing this type of theory is that it is hard to easy define if it has “contributed with knowledge” (as stated in Gregor) that is one main purpose of the paper and without adding new information to the world it is no longer a research paper. Another factor that is important to seize choosing this theory type is to make the area of investigation it narrow, facilitating the overview of the paper for the reader. The fact that the paper is easily read, understandable and have a good lay out and structure is an important thing for papers in the “Design and action” category. Since it is then easier to clearly see that it is contributing with knowledge and summing different resources up, enabling future researchers to base their research on the article.

What I've learned - Theme 2. Critical media theory

What is art? This question was the main focus during our seminar discussion this week. I did not expect us to discuss just that question after reading the text, but I did see the connection between this week’s theme and the importance of defining what you are critic to before judging it. If it is even possible to judge some not so defined as art. The definition of art as I see it is not something that is easily done and after this week’s discussion, I don’t find it possible. Art for me is everything around me, everything that I can see and everything that I can react to. Therefore I think there is as many definitions of art as there is beholders of art, because how people relate to their surroundings are all different.

My group talked a lot about the use of myths in human history to explain unexplainable event around us like lightning and other natural phenomenon. The enlightenment and what is viewed as “truth” is a continuously changing matter where new knowledge relegates old knowledge to the myths. Todays knowledge might there for be myths in the future even if it is viewed as fact today it might not be viewed as that tomorrow.

I’m curious to see what “myths” that we see as truth today that will be outdated and old in the future.

During the lecture I found the theme was more connected to the individual responsibility to be critical to what media industry provides us and how the industry even can affect the view on historical events. And I me thinking about a article I read a few days ago. Apparently, according to the article the react around the world regarding help when natural disasters acquire depends on how it is perceived in the medias. And it even affect the politicians in where to send help and how much help others get. I can understand this is a tricky question but is it okay that the medias have so much power so they can almost decide where to send help and where not to in case of catastrophe only in what they are reporting about.