Theme 4: Quantitative Research

I read the paper “Information, expression, participation: How involvement in user generated content relates to democratic engagement among young people”. The study examines how UGC involvement relates to two types dimensions of democratic engagement: political knowledge and political participation.

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

This paper employs survey data as a quantitative method. The survey was sent out to 2000 adolescents (13-17 years old), and 90% of them (N=1812) participated. The benefits of this method is that you reach a large number of participants, with not to much work. The researcher could spread the survey in 13 different schools, which made it possible to take factors like different households, into count. Also, the survey wants the participants to answer questions that could result in very different answers, depending on who you ask and how they perceive the question. This could lead to difficulties when later comparing the answers. Therefore, I think it was wise to use a survey with pre-defined answers, which facilitates the analysis and the process of the responses. But in the same time, the pre-defined answers could complicate and mislead the result, if the participants are forced to choose answers that are not fully correct.

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

By reading this paper in particular, I don’t think I learned something new about quantitative methods. I recognize the method from the course “Kandidatexamensarbete”,  where we got familiar to this type of method. But while reading the paper, I realized that using a quantitive method is not only a way of reaching to a big group of people. You can take advantage of the ease of reaching large amounts, but also different groups of people, e.g when the authors have participants from several schools with no significant difference in effort.

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

I did not find any distinct difficulties in the use of this paper. But, every “year group” of the participants received 100€ for participating, and that is something that I, as in previous seminars, think may affect the statistics. This could have led to adolescents participating just to get the compensation, which could have led to less truthful responses.

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

As in the paper I just read, I think the biggest benefit of using a quantitative methods is the little effort you have to give in contrast to the amount of responses you can collect.  E.g when using a survey, you “just” have to send it to more people, which is not much job if you compare it to the qualitative method, which could mean more interviews (= more work). A limitation using quantitative methods, e.g. surveys, is that it seldom involves contact with the correspondents. I think this could lead to misunderstanding, both from the participants misunderstanding a question, and the researcher misunderstanding an answer. There are no supplementary questions made.  And, as mentioned before, sometimes the pre-defined answers can mislead the result.

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

Qualitative methods on the other hand, give a more qualitative result. You can have a deeper analyze and, also, I think you get a deeper understanding of the result. In interviews, for example, you can adjust the questions to reach desired answers, and the researcher and participants can have a conversation which decrease the risk of misunderstanding. Limitations with this method is that it takes more time and effort to implement, which leads to fewer participants. Then it can be more difficult to draw conclusions and generalize your answers.

Post seminar 3

During the seminar we discussed what theories we found in the papers.

But first, what is theory? Theory is something that explains why things happen. (quote from seminar)

But there are different types (/chategories) of theory. Before the seminar, I thought my text was based on the explaining and predicting type of theory, since I saw the authors predict the result in the beginning of the paper with hypotheses. I got a little confused during the seminar, but I think I finally understood the differences, and why my paper is just explaining and not predicting. A predicting theory, leads to ability to make strong assumptions. The theory makes it possible to formulate hypotheses. The result of my paper is just an explication of why.

The paper I read was based of the theory of type II, the explaining type. At the seminar we learned that theories seldom are  “clean”, as in consisting of just one type. They are hybrids and one type of theory often contains other types aswell. Then, I think the paper also is based on theory I, the analyzing type. The explaining contains analyzing parts, but it is a deeper type of theory.

Theme 3: Research and theory

The journal I chose is “From identity to identification: fixating the fragmented self” by Liesbet van Zoonen. This text is mostly about identity, but i think it got media technology context because it talks about about online identities aswell.  It defines different sort of media and technology where our identity is “experiemented” with. It’s about the internet and the possibilities, but also risks, in creating and experimenting online, when the offline identity is left behind. The journal has an impact factor of 1.4.

I chose the paper “The Benefits of Facebook ‘‘Friends:’’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites” by Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe. The paper/study want to examine the relationship between social medias - in this case Facebook - and the maintainance of social capital. It discusses social capital as the bonding and bridging parts, but the paper also discusses a dimension of social capital, called maintained social capital, which means users ability to stay connected with their contacts/members of a previously inhabited community.

In this paper, they use a regression analysis - method. The analyzing is based on answers from a survey of 286 (out of 800) undergratuated students (where 268 of them were Facebook members). The students got 5 dollars in compensation to fill in the survey, which I think can affect the result negatively. It may have led to students answering the survey just to get the 5 dollars. Another problem in the paper, I think is that they generalize their result. Just like 286 undergratuated student can not correspond to all the Facebook users, neither can Facebook correspond to all the SNSs (social network sites).

1.“Theory is the answers to queries of why”. Theory tries to express and explain phenomenas. According to Sutton and Staw, it is hard to exactly explain what theory is, they mean it is easier to explain what it’s not; “theory is not data, variables, diagrams and hypotheses.” These are tools that can support a theory.

You can divide theory into 4 primary goals of theory: analysis and description, explanation, prediction and prescription. The theory should be developed depending on the nature of question and problem of the research. Different combinations of these goals leads to five kinds of theory:

I Analysis

II Explanation

III Prediction

IV Explanation and prediction

V Design and action 

2. I think the theory used in the paper is a mix of II Explanation and III Prediction. Explanation theory “says what is, how, why, when, and where. The theory provides explanations but does not aim to predict with any precision. There are no testable propositions”. The paper wants to explain and investigate the connection between Facebook and social capital. Therefor I think it is a explaining theory. But in the same time, the paper also contains several hyphoteses, which I think are predicting. Prediction theory “says what is and what will be. The theory provides predictions and has testable propositions but does not have well-developed justificatory causal explanations”. The paper discusses social capital which I think can be defined differently among different people. Also, as I said before, the survey is not flawless which does not lead to well-developed explanations and arguments. 3. I think an advantage of working with a predicting theory is that you don’t have to deal with all theory available of the subject, because you focus on a special part. But in the same time, it is important to not lock yourself up in this same focus, and not start working towards what your hyphotheses predict.

Post seminar 2

The texts of this week are linked to last weeks texts due to the thoughts and willingness of the authors to brake existing conditions. They want to look with a critical eye on things that are “natural” and considered as “the truth” by society. Last week was all about perception and this week about not fully trusting our senses.

The texts of this week are hard to understand even if they were easier to read than last week. You can read the sentenses but still having a hard time understanding what they actually mean. I think Håkan did a good job describing and explaining the context. The authors want to challenge the possibilities to find an objective truth about an object. During the seminar we started talking about nominalism and Håkan talked about a good example, the platonic realism, which separated the world into the idea world and the world of senses.

I find the fact that nominalism as a central term at the same time as being critisized, interesting. Even if nominalism leads to more objetive thinking, there are deficiencies, and complements are needed. Conceptual thinking is needed.

Theme 2: Critical media studies

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment

a. What is "Enlightenment"?

Enlightenment is in the text described as something you perceive/reach in “the widest sense as the advance of thought”. Then, people are revealed from fear, since you fear what you don’t know. You become master of your mind, gathering knowledge about what used to be unknown. Myths and beliefs, earlier unknown and something you couldn’t prove, are now within your knowledge. Whats going on in your mind, now matches with nature.This enlightenment make people master of nature. The purpose of enlightenment is to use our knowledge to research natural creations instead of myths.  

b. What is "dialectic"?

Dialectic is a method used to find the truth when we’re dealing with two different facts. Earlier this week, in theme 1, we talked about perception and the fact that two persons can see the same thing but percieve it in different ways. In such situations, dealing with different opinions, we need to find which of them is true. By discussing it with logical thinking and reason and considering the ideas with the opposite, we find the actual facts - with a dialectic method.

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

Nominalism defines some things as existing and says that other things don’t exist. It separates “real” objects from the abstract, and means that universal objects are just names without real existence. Nominalism is an important concept since the texts talks about enlightenment and people exterminating myths to gain knowledge instead. By nominalistic thoughts, myths and fantasies will be deselected.

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

Just like knowledge revealed people from fear, myths also did. Myths were created to explain what was unknown and inexplicable. The enlightment tries to remove the myths since they lack of scientific proof.

(“According to Adorna and Horkheimer, myth is a product of enlightenment.“)

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?

Superstructure and substructure are terms trying to explain the relation och connection between production and economy. Superstructure is a term about the society factors such as religion, media, education, laws, culture etc. Factors that impel society to development. Superstructues are driven and affected by substructure. If the substructure is good, then it will affect the superstructures positively. You can say that sub- and superstructures describe class society, which is not appreciated from a Marxist perspective.

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?

Benjamin did indeed see the revolutionary potentials in culture. One example is the technology of fotographing and recordings. This technology changed both cultural industries but especially the ability of discovering the world.

But, even if Benjamin sees potential, he does not like technology in terms of making art. Taking a picture does not have the same deep as painting a painting. But, in a enleightenment-way of thinking, the technology is appreciated since it a way of showing the trueth

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).

When people perceive things, in this case art, with their own mind, body and senses, it’s called a natural determined perception. And like we talked about perception in theme 1, people will percieve the art diffenrent. But, talking about historically determinded perception instead, the perception will change according time, just like the society and culture does.

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

Benjamin talks about aura as a “natural object of distance”. An aura can surround people, but also art. But it can not be reproduced, therefore, a painting can have an aura but not a photography.

Post seminar 1

During this first theme, we read two texts that for me were difficult to read and required a lot of focus. To understand the texts you had to really rethink what you'd just read, and even then you had to reread several parts to see what they actually ment. But after doing this, I have to admit, I still find them hard to understand.

During the seminar we began with identifying terms from the texts. A first step closer to comprehension. We talked about analytic and synthetic judgements, a priori and pure reason. How is synthetic apriori possible to get knowledge of the world? And to state that "the book is black", are our eyes looking on the material enough to confirm it? We need knowledge to understand that the thing we see is a book, and to know that the material is black, which is a color we know. We know things about the world, but what does that mean?
We talked about categories of understanding. The categories are not in our heads, but everything is according to these categories. They are not, but they are what make everything in the world to be.

Furthermore, Platos thoughts were discussed to find out what seeing trough our senses mean. But, what is seeing and who sees? Maybe seeing is a combination of looking and perceiving. As Kant says "Perception without conception is blind".

After the lecture with Johan, at least some parts are more clear than others. But some understanding, actually leads to even more questions.

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science / Before

Question 1:

Kant wants to make us think differently about how we see and perceive our surroundings (objects). He wants us to look at things differently and see things from new perspectives. We’ve imagined the world and the universe we live in in a certain way. But this leads us to see new things, and expecting them to be in a certain way, according to previous experiences.
“ Logical propositions must be perceivable to be valid before using them to derive ‘truth’” – Kant talks about us needing to feel that something new is logical, before we’re ready to call it ”truth”. Furthermore, what we think is logical, depends on what we already know. In that way new things can never be new, only a combination of previous knowledge. Kant is against to determine the truth only based on logic. Logic is a way to show what our brain thinks about things by previous experience. The logic is the science that shows and proves nothing more than the rules of all our thinking. But with only logic new things will never occur.
“I do not mean by this a critique of books and systems, but of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may striveindependently of all experience”. Our new experiences are affected by previous experience, but Kant thinks that our perception should beindependent of all experience. We have to challenge what we see, and not relate to what we’ve seen before or how it ”should” be. A good example in the text was Copernicus watching the rotating stars, instead of discovering the fact that it was he himself who was rotating.

Question 2:

In the text, ”Knowledge is Perception” Socrates is trying to explain what knowledge is and tries to explain to Theaetetus knowledge relation to perception. Socrates believes that knowledge is what we perceive and the sensory experience is the basis of knowledge of reality. He talks about how the perception is different depending on the person, and how the perception of something is relative. For example, if you have 6 dices, it’s a half more than four dices, but only half of the twelve. Thus, 6 dices are both more and less. Nothing can grow or shrink if it remains itself, and is compared with itself. But it is only when we compare it with something else as its perception can be changed.
Just the same, we can perceive things differently. He talks about how the eye sees, and that we can not determine what one sees. He says that we don’t perceive anything as long as our eyes do not face the color of an object. When the eyes meet the whiteness of a flower, only then can we perceive its color – white. But what is white? We can not determine whether my definition of white is the same as yours. What I call white, maybe you would term as another color; but a white flower we have both learned to call white. We have no idea if our brains sees the same thing. Would the images be the same if we could print our thoughts on paper? We do not know.
This leads to Socrates argument ”you do not see with your eyes but through the eyes.” We perceive things different because we do not see with our eyes. Our eyes may be looking at the same thing, but what we perceive may be different. What we see can also make us feel something that others don’t. And where do we perceive that feeling? Not in the eyes.
Socrates thoughts could be described as to be against empiricism. Empiricism is based on thoughts that only what is proven by experience can be regarded as reliable, and the method to allow the available evidence to determine the formulation of a theory. Socrates says that just as with vision, what we know depends on what we have seen. Also, in contrary, what we see depends on what we know. For example, hearing a foreign language; if you know the language you hear it. According to Socrates, sensory experience is the foundation of knowledge of reality, which is rather than empirio-criticism.