4. Quantitative Research pre-reflection

The research paper I have chosen for this week was published 2012 in the journal “Computers in Human Behavior” with an impact factor of 2.067. The paper by Reynol Junco titles: “Too much face and not enough books: The relationship between multiple indices of Facebook use and academic performance”. The purpose of the study was to examine if there is a relationship between the Facebook use of students and their college grade point average (GPA).

Quanitative method used:

The author used the quantitative method “Web-based questionnaire” in order to generate a large sample and make the paper comparable to prior studies. The survey was hosted on “SurveyMonkey.com” and sent via E-Mail to N=3866 US students where n = 1839 answered the questions, which is an uncommon high response rate of 48 %.

Benefits:

The main benefit of this method is that it provides a big amount of precise, quantitative, numerical data which is relatively quick and without any great effort collected while reaching a large sample. Furthermore, the data can be directly downloaded as an SPPS file which makes the analysis of the results less time consuming. As a last point, the results are comparable to other studies using the same study design or the study itself can be easily replicable.

Limitations:

The main limitation of this method is that expression of motives, views and opinions cannot be taken into account (or only limited). This is the reason why this method is mainly used to test hypothesis while it doesn’t facilitate the development of new theories or approaches to explain a phenomenon or generate in-depth information. Another limitation can occur due to the misuse of sampling or weighing, which can harm the validity and reliability of the research study. In this particular case, the study was conducted via the Internet and only students who had access to the Internet could participate as well as only Facebook user’s were taken into account. This might affect the validity of the study.

I learned:

While reading the paper I learned that quantitative research involves a lot of statistical knowledge in order to being able to interpret the results in the right way. It is not that easy to just think of a few questions and start an online survey. Many factors have to be taken into consideration while formulating the questions as well as which parameters and variables you want to measure. For the analysis of the data and to make the best use of it you need a basic knowledge of mathematics and programs such as SPSS.

Main methodological problems of the study:

With the provided data the author was able to find a correlation between the Facebook usage of students and the overall GPA. However, it was impossible to determine the direction of the effect. In the end the author was not able to state whether the Facebook usage caused a low GPA or students with a low GPA used Facebook more often. The quantitative method could have been improved by having a few questions on how the students think that Facebook effects their school achievement. It would be also possible to combine the quantitative method with a qualitative method and conduct in-depth-interviews to get behind their opinions, views and emotions to detect the real causes. Another problem is that the study was only conducted in the US and only via online, so that the cultural context and the accessibility of Internet limited the scope of the study. This could have been avoided by replicating the study in different countries, with a paper-based questionnaire allowing non-Facebook user’s to participate.

In the paper “Physical Activity, Stress, and Self-Reported Upper Respiratory Tract Infection”, Lagerros et al. examined the relationship between physical activity and the upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). For their study the authors used a Web-based questionnaire which is an quantitative method.

Benefits and limitations of quantitative methods:

From reading the paper I could confirm my prior thoughts on the benefits and limitations of quantitative methods. The main benefit here was that they could test a hypothesis with statistical data and formulate if the result is statistically significant. In addition, they generated data which led to other assumptions about the phenomenon which they didn’t think of in the first place. On the other side, they needed a representative sample to generalize their findings, which involved a large amount of interviewees that had to be present during a specific period of time.

Benefits and limitations of qualitative methods:

In regard to this paper, qualitative methods can be used to analyze data from quantitative research. Apart from that, qualitative methods can give you a deeper insight and more detailed information about a specific topic or reveal new knowledge which can lead to formulate hypothesis. Its main limitation though, lies within its inability to make any generalizations because of its limited scope and sample.

References:

Junco, Reynol (2012): Too much face and not enough books: The relationship between multiple indices

of Facebook use and academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior. 28 (1), 187-198.

Fondell, E., Lagerros, Y. T., Sundberg, C. J., Lekander, M., Bälter, O., Rothman, K., & Bälter, K. (2010). Physical activity, stress, and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 43(2), 272-279.

3. Research and Theory post-reflection

In this week’s seminar we got an insight on how theories can be categorized. The taxonomy of theory types, as states by Gregor, goes further than the traditional understanding of theories as explanation or prediction types. In that way theories can also be considered as a type of analysis, explanation and prediction and design and action. While Gregor tries to define a certain set of characteristics for each type, in practical use – as we did in the seminar – the interpretations may vary what emerged into discussions. Some of the theories used in the research papers couldn’t be clearly defined as just one type of theory and could be stated as “either or”. This was depended on our subjective understanding of what a theory is and how we interpret Gregor’s classification. All this reasoning made it pretty clear for me how hard it is to define the term theory and it always depends on factors.

Another goal of the seminar was to critical reflect on the reliability and the validity of research papers. As we discussed different papers in class that covered a wide range of topics and were based on different kinds of theories, the limitation tough remained mostly the same for each of them.

A few limitations of the presented research papers we discussed in the seminar were such as the following:

- There was no generalization possible because the study was conducted in a specific cultural context or any other type of bias. A cross-cultural or longitudinal study would have given in some cases a more reliable insight due to a broader focus and the attempt to generalize a finding.

- The reliability of the collected data was in question, because it always depended on the research method that was used in the study and how the sample was chosen.

- A few studies had unclear defined examination variables, e.g. choosing high and low ranked links on Google always depends on how researchers define “high” and “low”.

- Some studies were conducted too narrowly and focused just on one specific group of people, a certain media type, device, or conceptualization of variables, while others were the total opposite.

As we all are quite acquainted now with how to categorize theories and what theories are not, the question for me still remains what theory is in its core? I always thought that a fundament of hypothesis which were approved as being valid would be sufficient enough to call a phenomenon “theory”. However, Sutten and Staw argue that a set of hypothesis cannot be considered theory and that a convincing and logical chain of arguments are needed in order to explain, predict, and delight (Sutton and Staw 1995: 378). Right now if I could choose, I would rather wish to be enlightened than delighted.

References:

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

3. Research and Theory pre-reflection

For this week’s topic I have chosen the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC), which has an impact factor of 1.778. Starting from 1995, JMCM publishes quarterly in the field of computer-mediated communication. Its formats, such as original articles and meta-analyses of prior research cover the areas of communication, information science, media studies, business, education, sociology and other disciplines. The journals focus lies on empirical research using social science methods on computer-based technologies.

The research paper by Humpreys, Pape and Karnowski with the title “Evolving Mobile Media: Uses and Conceptualizations of the Mobile Internet” has particularly aroused my interest. It was published in Volume 18, Issue 4 in July 2013 and gives insight on how students understand and use the mobile Internet with their smartphones or laptop computers. The main motivation for initiating the research were the emerging technological convergence, the increasing usage of mobile devices and the lack of research with the focus on mobile Internet behaviour.

With a sample of 21 undergraduate students, the study was conducted in the US and Germany as a semistructured one-on-one interview with a length of approximately 30 minutes. The goal was to get a better understanding on how students use the mobile Internet by taking the impact of cross-cultural differences into account.

The theoretical framework for this study is based on the Mobile Phone Appropriation Model (MPA

model) by Wirth et al. (2008) which makes use of existing theoretical approaches of quantitative and qualitative research. With its multidimensional approach, the MPA model seems to be highly qualified as a general framework in order to analyze the integration of Internet services into the user’s habits of communicating mobile.

Based on the MPA model, three research question were raised: 1) How do college students conceptualize the mobile Internet? 2) In what temporal, spatial, social and media-related contexts do college students report using the mobile Internet? 3) How do the students understand and use the mobile Internet differently?

The findings state that most students are familiar with the online environment but they don’t actually use the term ‘mobile Internet’ when talking about being ‘online on their mobile’.  However, the study revealed that the Internet usage varies on different devices depending on the context of the usage. With their laptops, most of the students would have an immersive Internet experience (e.g. classical web browsing), whereas with their smartphones they will mostly have an extractive Internet experience (e.g. quickly access information). An interesting point is that smartphones are sometimes used immersively, which occurs when being online on a social network like Facebook. Though, no significant cross-cultural differences were detected.

What is theory?

According to Sutton and Staw (1995), the definition of a theory can be seen as a wish list by stating what a theory should comprise (Sutton and Staw 1995: 378). Therefore it is easier to define what is not on the list: references, data, lists of variables or constructs, diagrams and hypotheses are not considered to be theory. Instead, a theory finds answers to the questions of “why” and tries to understand the systematic reason of an occurrence by dealing with underlying processes (ibid.) It usually builds upon a convincing and logical chain of arguments and “explains, predicts, and delights” (ibid.) According to Gregor all theories contain the same following components: physically representation, well defined constructs, relationships among constructs and significance in scope (Gregor 2006: 620).

Which theory type was used in the research paper?

For Gregor there are 5 types of theories in information systems research which can be defined as: analysis, explanation, prediction, explanation and prediction (EP) and design and action (ibid.). The presented research paper was using the analysis, according to Gregor’s taxonomy of theor types. The main reason for that is that the paper focused on analyzing and describing the mobile Internet usage of the students without asking “why”. It also didn’t make any predictions or gave suggestions on how to do something.

Benefits and limitation?

The great benefit of the analyses is that it generates new answers about something which hasn’t been covered deeply by research so far. As the author’s claim, they filled a gap with their analysis and gave in-depth information about how students use the mobile Internet.

The study is mainly limited by its approach of conducting a qualitative research which means that the sample cannot be generalized to a broader population. In addition, it couldn’t reveal any important details about cross-cultural differences due to the sample chosen as well as quantitative data, such as the usage time or frequency. For further studies, the authors suggest to make use of other research methods like diary studies or the experience sampling method in order to gain more detailed information. My main point of criticism lies within the fact that the study focused only on “how” and not on “why” the mobile Internet is used differently. The analysis only “says what is” without giving further explanations or make predictions how it might change in the future.

References:

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

Humphrey, L.;  von Pape, T.; Karnowski, V. (2013): Evolving Mobile Media: Uses and

Conceptualizations of the Mobile Internet. In: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Vol 18. (4), 491-507.

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

Wirth, W.; von Pape, T.; Karnowski, V. (2008). An integrative model of mobile phone appropriation. In: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol.13 (1), 593–617.

2. Critical Media Studies reflection

After the lecture and the seminar I can look upon this week’s topic with different eyes. The background information and the in-depth discussions during the seminar have been very helpful and crucial to get a better understanding of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s critique.

By placing the reading, Dialectic of Enlightenment, in the correct time frame when it was written, we can clearly see a critique against the pop culture that emerged in the US. Adorno and Horkheimer, both two left-wing intellectual German philosophers belonging to the cultural elite, are suffering under the circumstances of being in exile after escaping from Nazi-Germany. They experience of a cultural shock with their fear of losing themselves seems to be the base for their thoughts.

When I was writing my pre-reflection, I pretty much grasped the concept of enlightenment and understood the critique against the pop culture, or in the words of the authors: “culture industry”. On the one hand, there is the concept of “enlightenment” which is an internal contradiction in itself trying to liberate us from myth. However, the myth of enlightenment is to find reason. On the other hand, there is the concept of the “culture industry” which refers to the pop culture and describes the commercialization and standardization of cultural goods to feed the masses. What haven’t been so clear for me was the link between these both. After the seminar I got some kind of “enlightened”.

Adorno and Horkenheimer made an attempt to critical reflect on how the culture industry becomes an industry which is used as an instrument to produce different kinds of myths such as science, progress or the illusion of individuality. When reducing culture to some kind of commodity of mass consumption, it becomes a form of manipulative social propaganda. In this regard, modern science is not enough for enlightenment or critical reflection. In other terms, “knowing” means to manipulate and do the god’s trick by looking down on nature. Individuality as well cannot be achieved in the culture industry, because of the loss of a public sphere, which is meant as a place of competition, where someone can create a following and become an individual. Instead of a public sphere we find ourselves in a black box where we lose ourselves in conformity. If there is even such a concept as individualism, I doubt if one can ever achieve it.

What the critical theory tries to seek, is to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them. With the enlightenment project and the aspect of asking critical questions against enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer tried to liberate enlightenment from itself. After placing all this in the right context of time I’m wondering, if they mainly tried to liberate themselves?

Applying these thoughts on the context of nowadays media culture, we could argue that new media formats like Social Media, which became a major part of it, are used as instruments to indoctrinate people instead of instruments of enlightenment to liberate them. While they create an illusion of a public sphere they establish uniformity and reduce individuality. I’m questioning if we are losing ourselves right now in the Social Web and if there is a way out to liberate us?

2. Critical Media Studies pre-reflection

When I first read the term ‘Enlightenment’ it was for me immediately linked to the era of Western philosophy – a philosophical, cultural and scientific movement that questioned traditional authority and determined reason as the only source for legitimacy and authority during the 18th century.

In ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’, Adorno and Horkheimer disconnect their understanding of Enlightenment in many ways from what I thought it was, regarding the Age of Enlightenment. For Adorno and Horkheimer Enlightenment emerged earlier in history, during the transition from the prehistorical age to the historical age. The exact location of the creation of Enlightenment can be found in Greek mythology, in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 2002: xviii) which had “the first traces […] of myth and enlightenment” (ibid.). Before there was Enlightenment, human beings were dominated by the nature, because fear resulted from the unknown (ibid.: 11). Due to understanding by reason and rationality, human beings conquered superstition and were liberated from fear. The liberation from mythology and blind belief installed humans as ‘masters,’ and can be understood as Enlightenment in the widest sense (ibid.: 1).

In Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s understanding ‘myth’ is every form of knowledge that existed before Enlightenment. It contains magical elements and is to a high degree superstitious and subjective. In its core myth refers to ritual and the ability to represent how things happen (ibid.: 5). Myth is already Enlightenment and Enlightenment reverse to myth (ibid.: 218). While myth deals with fear and problems of unknown things, such as ‘God’, Enlightenment “is mythical fear radicalized” (ibid.: 11).

The authors don’t state that myth is the primary source of Enlightenment, but its function could mainly be described as a way for us to explain and understand nature or the unknown.

When Adorno and Horkheimer speak of old media types they mention feature films, radio and magazines. These old media types can by definition only become ‘new media’, when they contain technologies which enable digital interactivity. But so far there is no broad hint in the book that the authors mentioned any forms of new media. Considering the time when the book was written, the term ‘new media’ could be referred to television, which is described by the authors as the merge of feature films and radio, which of course was growing in the early 1940s (ibid.: 97).

By introducing the term cultural industry, Adorno and Horkheimer are defining an industry that emphasizes on the marketability of culture. They claim that culture is used, rationalized and commercialized by capitalism in order to manipulate the mass society into passivity. In that way, every cultural good have become commodities with no or just little meaning to people. With no reflection on economic processes and with extensive use of mass production and standardization, the cultural industry tailors “films, radio and magazines” into a uniform system (ibid.: 94). Cultural goods can easily be replaced or reproduced, so that each one declines in significance. Creators therefore more and more strive for profit instead for a way of their artistic expression. The consequences for this process lies within the loss of individuality and the commodification of ourselves. What we see as individuality becomes in the cultural industry an illusion. The title of the chapter makes it even more clear how to understand cultural industry: as the “Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (ibid.: 94).

The concept behind the culture industry is to totalize the audiences by exposing them to a steadily repeated promise that is never fulfilled. According to Adorno and Horkheimer, the products of cultural industry are in a way created that they deny and prevent any active thinking of the recipients. In that way the mass media are subtly taking dominance over the masses, turning them into marionettes of the capitalistic culture industry. Instead of serving the masses and initiating a process of Enlightenment, mass media only deceive and enslave their recipients with their commodified cultural products.

An interesting term that the authors mentioned in the beginning of the 4th Chapter is “technical rationality”. I found it interesting how the term was used in the particularly context and I had to look it up to fully grasp what it means. The term refers to Herbert Marcuse, who was like Adorno and Horkheimer a theorist of the Frankfurt School. By technical rationality Marcuse described a system that operates on the basis of creating false need (Marcuse 1941). According to Adorno and Horkheimer, technology is gaining power over society because those with the strongest economic position in society are powerful (ibid.: 95). They further formulate the equation that technical rationality is the rationality of domination (ibid.). Putting this together, it means to me that advances in technology had led to a lack of reflection or sensitivity. For what reason are humans producing bombs? For what reason is Apple releasing every year a new version of the iPhone? Because they hold the strongest economic position in society and therefore possess the power to dominate society. They are capable of creating false need in order to keep their superior position.

References:

Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, Max (2002): The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Philosophical Fragments. Standford: Standford University Press.

Marcuse, Herbert (1941): “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology”. In: The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt. New York: Continuum, 1982. 138-162.

1. Theory of Science Reflection

Since my reflection on this topic is limited to the blog postings of my other classmates and further readings, I will try to point a few things out which stuck in my mind the last days.

The concept of Russell’s sense-data was grasped pretty well from everyone, because in my opinion we are easily satisfied with his rational explanation of things. Sense-data was laid out as the information we immediately experience through our senses when we perceive something. It can be considered as signs of existence of something that is independent of us.

However, I’m questioning if this also applies to our dreams? When we dream of an object, let it be a table or a person, I believe that we actually do have the sensations we think we have. But then, for what reason does our sensation not correspond to a physical object? Why can we dream of ghosts or make up creatures in our imagination that doesn’t exist in our common sense ‘reality’?

I believe that experiences go beyond our consciousness and sense-datum isn’t always connected to physical objects.

I want to illustrate my thoughts with another example. If our table is hidden behind a table cloth – would we start thinking that there is a piece of cotton remaining static in the air? No that would be ridiculous and we actually do believe, that there is a table underneath the cloth, although we don’t receive the immediate sense-data of the table itself. The most prominent reason for that might be that we learned to recall sense-data when we assume that we already experienced something. By doing so, we are making up a quick explanation for what we just perceived in order to satisfy our minds, even though we cannot be certain what it really is. Russell’s explanation of knowledge by description could explain this phenomenon, when somebody would actually describe this object to us, by saying that there is a table underneath the cloth. But, even if there is nobody to do that, we would know that this is a table. Is there a knowledge by assumption? Or is there a knowledge by memory from which we can recall sense-data of experiences that happened in the past?

Furthermore I’m asking myself, what happens when we receive sense-datum that doesn’t correspond to any object we have knowledge of, e.g. hallucinations? Is it our senses that cheat on us or do we perceive something we don’t know it exists? I will leave this open for discussion.

What I found really difficult to understand is Russell’s concept of knowledge and his reasoning behind if we can know anything at all? While reading through the other blog postings I could see that I’m not the only one struggling with that. I gave it a new try and understood how he differentiates knowledge. Besides knowledge by description and acquaintance there is empirical knowledge which can be called so, when it lies to a great extend upon experience and asserts existence. And there is a priori knowledge which is independent of all particular experiences and hypothetical concerning existence.

But here again, I’m struggling: What is knowledge that is independent of all experiences since experiences or sensations are the only things of which we can be certain of? Ayn Rand puts it like this: “If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms” (Rand 1963: 124). According to Rand, the act of being conscious of something presupposes the primacy of existence. Then I’m asking: Is it just our consciousness that perceives the world and creates reason behind it or is there something that is extant? When everything is entirely made up by our mind, there might be no object to be known, but only to be created by our own subjective consciousness.

Descartes assertion “I think, therefore I am” becomes obscure to me and I feel like replacing it with: “I want it to be, therefore it is”.

References:

Rand, A. (1963): For the New Intellectual. The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Flensburg: Signet.

1. Theory of Science pre-reflection

Bertrand Russell starts his book 'The Problems of Philosophy' by asking a central philosophical question: “Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?” (Russell 1919: 1) By doing so, he creates the realization that our assumptions we make in every day live, can be reconsidered by ‘radical doubt’: We cannot be sure that something is even real, although we can perceive it.

Russell explains this by stating that the colour, the shape, the sound and the surface of a ‘table’ always differ according to our point of view. Since we cannot share the exact same point of view, what we see is not the real table, but more of what we infer from our senses. In order to draw the line between our perception of an object and its real existence, Russell introduces the term ‘sense-data’, which he defines as “things that are immediately known in sensation” (Russell 1919: 4).

In our example, the colour, the smell, the sound and the touch of the table are sense-data and their collective experience the ‘sensation’. Because Russell denotes our sense-data to be personal, our sensation may vary and therefore can’t reveal the reality of an object. If there was a real table, which we are unaware of, it would be a ‘physical object’ that can be defined as ‘matter’.

Without having adequate demonstrations, if there is such a thing as matter, Russell states that it must be rational to believe that our sense-data are “signs of the existence of something independent of us and our perceptions” (Russell 1919: 11).

Russell created his concept of sense-data by using Descartes method of ‘radical doubt’ in order to differentiate between appearance and reality. From what I understood, reality might therefore be something that is not immediately present to our sensation.

When he further lays out that knowledge can be gained by acquaintance or by description, he introduces the term “proposition” which is a statement about an object and its relation. Whereas a propositions may be true or can be doubted, a statement of fact can be evaluated as true or false due to its fact and might in some cases be derivative from true propositions (Moore, 1953:  308). Other verbal expressions don’t share the value as being evaluated as true or false by evidence.

According to Russell, “every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.“ Russell exemplifies that the proposition ‘a is the so-and-so’, which means that a is something, with which we are acquainted and that only a has the property ‘so-and-so’. When we propose that e.g. ‘Lisbeth Salander’ is ‘the girl with the dragon tattoo’, we would know that only she has the property to be ‘the girl with the dragon tattoo’. Although when descriptions about Lisbeth Salander may vary, the proposition that she is ‘the girl with the dragon tattoo’ would stay the same.

 But even if we are not acquainted with an object with our sense-data, we still could have knowledge about the object because of its description. Russell divides the term description into ambiguous with the form “a so-and-so”, and into definite with the form “the so-and-so”. In our example we could say that ‘a girl with a dragon tattoo’ is ambiguous whereas ‘the girl with the dragon tattoo’ is the definite description. Even though I might be not acquainted with ‘the girl with the dragon tattoo’, I know that she has the given property and I know that there is only one ‘girl with the dragon tattoo’.

Based on Russell’s thoughts, we can say that we know things beyond our own immediate experience (sense-data) through the descriptions of things, i.e. knowledge by description.

In the last chapters, Russell refers to the Platonic dialogue by taking up the question, if we can ever know anything at all?

He tries to come up with a definition for knowledge and has to admit that knowledge is not a ‘precise conception’ and merges into ‘probable opinion’. In the end he states that, “what we firmly believe, if it is true, can be called knowledge” (Russell 199: Chapter 13), when it is intuitive or inferred from intuitive knowledge, which consists of pure ‘empirical’ and pure ‘a priori’ knowledge. When we cannot tell if, what we firmly believe, is true or not – which Russell doubts – it can be called probable opinion and would commonly pass as knowledge, even though it has not the highest degree of self-evidence.

Furthermore Russell criticizes that many philosophers claim to prove fundamental things such as dogmas of religions and the essential rationality of the universe by a priori metaphysical reasoning. In his opinion, these attempts are useless because “knowledge concerning the universe as a whole is not to be obtained by metaphysics” (Russell 1919: Chapter 14). Only methodical doubt, which is according to Russell the essence of philosophy, can reduce the risk of error in knowledge, which will always be susceptible of error since humans are fallible.

References:

Russell, Bertrand (1912): The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, G. E. (1953): Some Main Problems of Philosophy, London: Unwin.