Theme 2 - Comments on other students blogs

Links to my comments on other students blog:

1. cloudsong223
2. theoatmeth
3. blog4course99
4. duckyduckyducky
5. bjornsblogggg
6. vadfinnsegentligen
7. dm2572lisa
8. suchapriori
9. elindm2572
10. literaturestuffm

Post Theme 3: Research and theory

The literature we had to read for these theme differed from the previous texts. I felt that these texts were much easier to understand because they were more based on facts than philosophical thoughts and reasoning. This gave me much more time on actually thinking about what I had read and the questions I had to answers.

The lecture with Leif D. started out good, with a clear definition of theory.

“A theory is a set of propositions that aims to identify (abstract) objects and their relation to each other.” -Leif Dahlberg

Especially this sentence confirmed my understanding of what theory is. I also felt that my understanding prior the lecture was confirmed during the lecture. One thing I didn’t really understand was the point of the question “What is man?”. We all gave a lot of answers to the question, such as culture, body, consciousness, feelings, and so on that we put up on the whiteboard. But I did not understand the purpose or felt that it was explained by the lecturer with a conclusion. Maybe it was just a way of making us give a set of propositions?

During the seminar my group discussed our chosen papers as a starter. It seemed that no one had difficulties understanding the task and questions. Most of us also felt that it was easier describing theory by what it is not rather than what it is. We agreed on everything and I felt that it was because of the texts being pretty straightforward that there were not that much room for open interpretations from these texts. One thing my group brought up, that I found to be interesting, was that the authors contradicted each other on one statement. In the text “What theory is not”, Sutton and Staw states:

“Diagrams or figures can be a valuable part of a research paper but also, by themselves, rarely constitute theory”

Meanwhile Gregor points out one of the categories of theory being Analysis. He explains it as a category analyzing what is. This theory analyzes data and diagrams which contradicts Sutton and Staws statement.  

Another debate during the seminar was what hypothesis is and how it differs from a theory. I felt that this discussion gave me a better explanation on what a hypothesis is. A hypothesis must be something you can reason around and argue about, if you can not do that then it is not a hypothesis. And a theory is built on a hypothesis that can be tested.

This theme was fun to read about, especially since I could relate to the keywords after having done my bachelor thesis. The assignment, lecture and seminar were mostly straightforward in my opinion.

Pre Theme 4: Quantitative research

1. Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
2. What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

I have chosen the article “A comparison study of user behavior on Facebook and Gmail” published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior with a impact factor of 2,694.

The article’s main focus is to investigate if and how Social Network Sites, SNS, and email activities are correlated. They limited the Social Network Sites to Facebook and the web-based email service to Gmail. Instead of only using surveys they decided to collect data about usage from the participants Facebook and Gmail account. This is a new method to me, I had never heard about an interface collecting data from a third party and making it accessable to the researcher. They managed to recruit 1015 participants living in the US. Each participant had to first answer an online survey with questions about their demographic and psychological information. Then the participants had to use a interface retrieving data from their Facebook and Gmail accounts. All participants had to participate only once. This a quantitative method of collecting data. The benefits to using a quantitative method like this is that you can quickly retrieve a lot of data and increase the potential of finding commune statistic. It shows a descriptive summarization of usage in this case. Although a limitation to this method is that we can not investigate the descriptive data further and getting answers on users own interpretations. In the paper they mention that this method can help reduce the amount of people being bias which is easily happened when using surveys. This was something I had not thought about before and agree with. As I agree I still feel that this method had some weakness affecting the result. The participant knew about the OAuth collecting their usage data since they had to create their own accounts and this could have affected the collection of data. But I think that they considered this being a fault and tried to minimize their data being wrong by comparing their data with comparing their results from the surveys to studies made before. It could have been prevented by not telling the participant that it was a SNS and a email service they were going to investigate. Also the number of participants is to little comparing to the total amount of Facebook and Gmail users, therefore it is hard to make a general assumption of all users by this data. This could have been prevented by limiting their field to maybe only one country.

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

Benefits of quantitative methods are:

• Easy and fast data collection.
• Being a numerical type of research it gives the benefits of being objective and not subjective when analyzing the data. 
• This method can provide statistics making the analysis of big amount of data easier.
• Possibility of being anonymous.

Limitations of quantitative methods are:

• Requires huge amount of data which also requires many participants. Finding enough participants can be problematic.
• Well thought and formed questions so it leaves no room for misinterpretation since the researcher have no possibility to clarify anything after for example the questionaries has been sent out.
• Expenses from surveys and limitations of distributing all papers. Could lead to limiting the distribution through online services.
• Participants being potential bias.

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

Benefits of qualitative methods are:

• Investigate deeper and more detailed in topics. Could also lead to new questions depending on the type of qualitative method where the participants or researcher is able to ask leading questions.
• Less number of participants, makes it also easier to find people. 
• The method is flexible since you can change and adapt to new information found through for example open interviews.
• Can give qualitative data about peoples interpretations and experiences.

Limitations of qualitative methods are:

• Can not make general assumption of a population or broader amount of people.
• Much depends on the researcher that is collecting the data. The person has to be careful on how it acts and phrases the questions. The researcher has to be able to be objective all the time.
• Participants willing to be anonymous can cause problems.

Post Theme 2: Critical media studies

During the seminar we were split up into smaller groups to discuss our answers on the enquiries given for this theme and also the difference between realism and nominalism.

I found nominalism to be really hard to get a grasp on even after the discussion with my group. It wasn’t until the professor clarified it that I felt that I had gotten a clearer understanding. On my pre post I wrote that “The general conditions we attach to the abstract, non-existing, objects are just names we give to groups of phenomena” but I didn’t fully know what it meant. Now I understand that nominalism do not believe in universal words, they want to minimize the preconceptions given to objects. For example nominalism can’t say a thing is red because there are different shades of the color red and nominalism do not believe in defining all different shades into one single word as ”red”. In other words nominalism do not believe in universal words. Meanwhile realism is anti-nominalism since they believe in objects having things common.

An interesting point of view regarding nominalism brought up on the seminar was that nominalism disarms revolutionary possibilities. I agreed with this because when nominalism sees a man it only sees a man and not all its qualities and distinctions from other persons. Nominalism deprives us the tools needed to develop. I have trouble ever seeing myself thinking in a nominalism way.

Another thing that I found interesting about this theme was the view on culture having revolutionary powers. Before the seminar I had misunderstood what differed between Benjamin’s point of view and Adorno & Horkheimer. Benjamin’s view on culture having revolutionary powers refers to that artists are the ones that can make a difference, they are the ones that have the power. Meanwhile Adorno and Horkheimer feels that popular culture do not have that kind of power.

Benjamin also believes that the new technology such as the new kind of cinema made it possible to actually show all different kinds of humans and not only queens and kings. And this is something positive because this allows all humans to be seen independently of their social position. Adorno & Horkheimer on the other hand feels that it only makes us stuck on how things are supposed to be. For example a receptionist is only a receptionist working for a company and does not open up to new possibilities but only makes humans lazy and not inspired to develop. Benjamin contradicts this by saying that everyone can be part of a culture reproduction, and it gives everybody a chance to develop.

I had grasped the other words such as dialectic, enlightenment and aura well since my interpretation agreed with how my seminar group and the professor explained them.

After this theme I have started to think about the power of technology.

Theme 1 - Comments

Links to my comments on other students blog:

1. butlikewhyisit
2. suchapriori
3. vadfinnsegentligen
4. elindm2572
5. dm2572lisa
6. cloudsong223
7. theandme15
8. blog4course99
9. theoatmeth
10. duckyduckyducky

Pre Theme 3: Research and theory

I have chosen the journal Computers in Human Behavior which is a scholarly journal with an impact factor of 2.694. The journal focuses on the human behavior and interaction with computers from a psychological perspective. Their publications examines the usage of computers on fields related to psychology and the effect that computer usage has on different levels such as individuals, groups and societies. I found the journal to be interesting and relevant for media technology research because of the main focus being on humans interacting with computers and not vice versa. Media technology is developed for humans and therefore it's important for us to understand and examine phenomena such as human development, learning and social interactions that are being affected by computers.

A paper that has been published in this journal is “Eyeface: A new multi-method tool to evaluate the perception of conceptual user experiences”. The paper aims to validate if a new multi-method tool named Eyeface could be used to evaluate the user experience in the conceptual phase. The Eyeface tool is a combination of two tools, the Eye-tracking and the Facereader. Two computers manages the data but the user executes the experiment on one computer. A tool called Panas-X, list of words that shows your feelings and emotions, was used to complement and validate collected data from the Facereader. To confirm their hypothesis of the Eyeface providing validate data to judge conceptual user experience they tested it on seven students. The students where first briefly informed about the study, and then after the calibration of devices they watched a video while being analyzed through face expressions and eye movement with the Eyeface. The video shows a new concept Fundawear founded by Durex, the video is available on Youtube. After the video they filled out the Panas-X form and then a questionnaire with the purpose of collecting qualitative data regarding the user’s perception in order to help the design process. All data collected was lastly analyzed and presented through graphs, showing result of the Facereaders expressions for each user and the amount of positive or negative emotions felt for each user. Through the Eye-tracking data they could see which part of the design that interested the users. With this exploratory purpose they concluded the hypothesis being proven. Although the Eyeface needs more research and further development before providing satisfactory accuracy.

I perceived this paper to be interesting with a new perspective on how to use two already existing tools. The background part is thin, I’m lacking a bit more research on how Eye-tracking and Facereader has been used before and how accurate they have proven to be. Since the journal focuses on the humans and not on the technology they have a very simple and good explanation on the technologies being used. They only portray one argument about companies starting to take into account the experience of the user and they feel that it’s important to keep bringing the academic knowledge and companies together. They could have had more arguments, such as maybe how this could be used as a tool to analyze learning methods by using videos. Their method is simple, although they don't explain why they informed the participants before the study or how this could've affect the results. In think informing the participants did affect the result since they knew they were being watched through their facial expressions and could've altered their expressions.


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

Theory is not data, lists of variables or constructs, diagrams or hypotheses. A strong theory is a theory that explains why, how and under which circumstances something occurs. By this meaning that only a researcher can provide the information on why and how different parts of the paper affects each other.


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?

The major theory on the paper I chose would be the theory for design and action, because the paper is about how to use a new multi-method tool in order to evaluate and prove the hypothesis of it being effective. They also use a certain prescription and technique on how to collect and read the data.


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

The benefits with the theory is that the tool can be used by using the given methods, techniques and so on. Which means that you get an answer to the questions; what? when? how? where? 
On the other hand some limitations as mentioned in the text by Gregor is that making non-experts understand the expert knowledge and making it actionable are needed (Table 8).

References:

Ganix Lasa, Daniel Justel, Aiur Retegi, Eyeface: A new multimethod tool to evaluate the perception of conceptual user experiences, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 52, November 2015, Pages 359-363, ISSN 0747-5632, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215004550

Computers in Human Behavior, http://www.journals.elsevier.com/computers-in-human-behavior/

Gregor, S. (2006). The Nature of Theory in Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 30(3), 611-642

Sutton, R. I. & Staw, B. M. (1995). What Theory is Not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 371-384

Post Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend any of the seminars for Theme 1. Therefore this blogpost will be longer than the normal word criteria. I will reflect about how I have contributed to this week’s theme, basically what I’ve learned and how I’ve learned it.

So, the last time I had an philosophical assignment like this one was probably in high school. I’m 23 years old and as you might have guessed it, it’s been awhile since high school. I had to go through a lot of hours of procrastination until I was finally able to start this assignment. Looking at the amount of pages I was supposed to read in a short amount of time was a bit fearsome since I’m not a frequent reader. I decided to start with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I found this text to be very hard and complex to understand. The sentences were built on difficult words and if an example was made to clarify something it only made it more confusing. I only read it once and quickly came to understand that reading the whole thing again wasn’t going to help at all. And also I didn’t have the time to do so. Kant basically destroyed my already low confident of my ability to read. I know now that I should have started with Plato’s, comparing to Kant his choice of words and writing was much easier to understand. I felt that following the dialogue between Socrates and Theaetetus was more reasonable than just having someone explaining everything directly.

While I was reading both of the text, I was also looking at the questions that were supposed to be answered for the first assignment. I experienced it to be difficult answering the questions on Kant’s text. Therefore I decided to turn to the cyberbank of knowledge which we refer to as the Internet.

There are a lot of detailed summaries of the Critique of Pure Reason with an easier language which cleared up many questions that I had. I also watched videos on YouTube where they explain Kant’s point of view regarding the questions given to us with really good explanations visually that I could relate to and understand. By doing this I managed to answer the questions without really having fully understood the meaning of any of texts. I would strongly recommend this to other students.

Something I have learned during this theme is this quote that was mentioned by the lecturer made by Kant, who says:

“Perception without conception, is blind.

Conception without perception is empty.”

This quote is really a great summary of  what Plato also was saying by that, we only see and hear through our senses and not with them. I understood what Plato meant when answering the question for the Pre blog posting. But I also found Kant’s quote to make it clear for me that it is only when we put the senses in a concept that it gets a meaning.

During the later part of the class were the lecturer talked about Kant and some important terminology it started getting really confusing. I understood the difference of a priori and a posteriori very well before the class, but it made even more sense after the class. I especially found that the difference between synthetic and analytic judgements was well explained with this example by the lecturer:

If I say there are students in a classroom it is a priori analytic knowledge. But if I were to say there are 39 students in a classroom that would suddenly become a posteriori synthetic judgement since there is no way I could have had the precise knowledge of how many students there are in the classroom without having first experienced the situation and counted the students. So the analytic sentences are just something we know without some further investigation of it being true or not.

Through the rest of the class I felt that we moved too fast from one terminology to another, therefore I never managed to make much sense of what the meaning of each words were. An example are Kant’s categories. I perceived it being categories, as faculties of knowledge, which objects needs to conform to. But I’m not quite sure how something could be split up into those categories. And what each of the categories meant. The lecturer made the example of seeing a tree. And then circled the categories which were the ones making the object a tree to us. It all went a little bit too fast for me, and got me a bit confused during the class. This was a question I wanted to bring up during the seminar, but since I couldn’t attend I looked it up myself and found this very good example making it more understandable. Since it is hard for me to understand things when I am not given an example I can relate to I found this image to be very easy to understand. On the image below you see how our thinking process during a shot when playing pool looks like split up into Kant’s categories.

Kant's thinking cap illustrated by Ralph Edney for the book Philosophy for Beginners, 1992, by Richard Osborne, p. 104.

Another question I wanted to bring up during the seminar was that as I perceived it, Kant does not acknowledge the existence of a God but he doesn’t either ignore it. The lecturer mentioned this during the class, but it didn’t really come through to me what Kant’s reasoning is on this matter. My thoughts have been that it has to be seen as that if you can prove an existence of something then the thing is real, and if you can not prove the non-existence of it then you can not say it does not exist. I’m also, since before, familiar with Kant’s quote:

“The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

I never quite understood the meaning entirely but I presume now that Kant means that what is above him (or his knowledge) he can not do or say anything truthful of, but of the things that are in his head, his knowledge, of that he can make a truthful perception. It would have been fun to know if this question was discussed during the seminar and what other students opinion were on this subject.

After having talked to some classmates that attended the seminar, I think I would have gained some clarity by being there. Many felt that the seminar were the best part of this theme.

I felt that this theme was pretty good for starting to think about how and why we perceive the world as we do and also what ways are there are to think regarding the issues.

Pre Theme 2 - Critical media studies

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment

a. What is "Enlightenment"?

Enlightenment is broadly defined as “the advanced thought” referring to knowledge. It is through knowledge and rational thinking that we can overcome our fears and restrictions in order to make ourselves masters.

b. What is "dialectic"?

A method for concluding the truth through a discussion based on logical and rational thinking. This type of discussion often occurs in groups where opinions differ. The discussion  requires each person to keep his mind open to others opinons and perspectives in order to succefully maintain the truth.

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

Simplified nominalism determines if objects has an existence or not. If an object is abstract it's considered to be non-existing and on the contrary if an object is physical it's considered as existing.  The general conditions we attach to the abstract , non-existing, objects are just names we give to groups of phenomena.

By this being said, nominalism states that objects that can not be scientifically proven are not true. Leading back to enlightenment, which also states that we can find the truth by using knowledge, nominalism becomes an important concept in the text.

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

Adorno and Horkheimer uses the meaning of myth as a function to explain and strengthen their view of enlightenment. I perceived myth to be invented fantasies created by us in order to achieve a feeling of secureness when confronted whit questions that we have no explanations to. Our fears are the myths.

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?
Examples of superstructures are societies, cultures or religions. All superstructures encourages the society to develop. Superstructures are created by adjoined substructures, without them, superstructures don’t exist. The substructures are in this context explained as the production of e.g. movies or paintings.

By this said, the connection between substructures and superstructures makes any change made to either fot hem affect the other. The substructures can change quickly, meanwhile superstructure take longer time until a change is made. I had difficulties fully understanding this, but as I perceived it the point with having a Marxist perspective when analyzing cultural production is to see how you can alter a cultural production directly through structures.

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 does believe that culture have revolutionary potentials. When the camera was invented we went from paintings to photography, and when the videocamera was invented we went from photography to film. Which proves that the fast developing new technology pushes the cultural revolution forward. The positive aspects of this is the learning and thinking development for people. Therefor it leads back to Adorno & Horkheimer´s perspective about enlightenment where we use our knowledge to see the truth. Although Benjamin isn’t very fond of technology being used to push forward the culture of art, as he feels that the art looses its aura when affected by technology.

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).
Benjamin argues that we perceive our world through two different types of perceptions. The first perception is naturally determined, this means it is established by our senses and experience. And the second perception is historically determined, meaning that historical events in the world can also affect our way of perceiving it. An example of such a historically determined perception given by Benjamin is when the late Roman art industry and the Vienna Genesis during the fifth century developed an art with  a new and different perception. I assume that the big shift of population, leading to an increased number of new groups of people, that Benjamin says happened during the fifth century led to a big influence on this historically determined perception.

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

The term aura is used to describe the originality of art that has not been reproduced. When art becomes reproduced, as a painting becomes a photography, it looses its  esthetic value. Therefor an aura of a piece of art can never be past on to something that has been reproduced. According to Benjamin photographies do not have auras.

This type of aura differs from auras in natural objects. Natural objects auras are based on senses. Benjamin uses the example that a branch casting its shadow on you is an aura from an natural object.

Pre Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

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?

First we need to understand that there are two different kinds of knowledge, a posteriori and a priori. A posteriori knowledge is obtained through experience, that is, it is empirical. While a priori knowledge means that knowledge is obtained independently of experience. Therefor you do not need to confirm something to know it’s true, for example a simple mathematical equation as 2+2=4.

Kant thinks that having being thought that our cognition must conform to objects has not given any results. Because to able to do that we must have gained the knowledge of the object through experience. I understand it as Kant saying that we can never truly experience anything directly. There are other perspectives to be taken into consideration other than the perspective of oneself, such as e.g. time and space. Therefor for us to make better progress within the field of metaphysics he proposes that objects must conform to our cognition. In other words, by instead using our knowledge we can understand an object. Kant explains this by comparing to Copernicus understanding of the celestial motions. The point of that comparison is that Copernicus had to change his point of view in order to understand the celestial motions, instead of having the sun revolve around us he put the sun in the center and made us revolve around. I think that it’s an interesting point of view that our minds, through a filter built on different perspectives, influence the way we understand and observe an object. 

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 Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

My understanding towards this question is that Socrates argues that our eyes and ears are tools used to see and hear “through” so that our mind can then collect the information and perceive what is being seen or heard. We don’t see and hear “with” our eyes and ears because we need our mind to create an perspective and opinion. Socrates says that all people have their own unique perception. Basically in order for us to understand an object we must use our senses and combine them with the help of our mind. I think that this makes Socrates argument directed towards the modern empiricism. The modern empiricism is based on knowledge being obtained through experience, a posteriori knowledge, primarily deriving from our five senses¹. Which Socrates also argues for by saying that knowledge is obtained from the experience of using our senses combined with our mind in order to perceive an understanding of an object.

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1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/#1.2