Theme 4: Quantitative Research

This week I chose a research paper from the journal “Computers in Human Bahaviour”. The journal is published by Elsevier Publishers and has an impact factor of 2.067.

The name of the research paper is “Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work?”, written by Ioannis Leftheriotis and Michail N.Giannakos.

The article examines the usage of social media among employees of insurance sector in Greece. Authors investigates whether employees use social media for work purposes, what motivations increase usage of social media and impact of social media on employees' work. Their hypothesis were:

1. Social media use for work is positively and significantly related

with the utilitarian value (motivation) offered to employees.

2. Social media use for work is positively and significantly

related with the hedonic value (motivation) offered to employees.

3.Work performance is positively and significantly related with

social media use in the work of employees.

Behavioral measurement was made by researchers through conducting surveys and questionnaires in this research. During their study, researchers conducted questionnaires to 1799 employees in insurance industry. Questionnaires were distributed to the participants through e-mail, online links and printed papers. The most significant advantage of using this type of method is conducting surveys allows researchers to ask efficiently a lot of questions and to reach scores of people at the same time with less effort and material. Furthermore it allows them to make statistical inference easily by gathering a great number of data. On the other hand participants might give fallible answers to the questions that could mislead the results. Moreover results are only reliable at the time when the survey is conducted so there is no continuum. Furthermore stereotyped and predefined, answers might not reflect the correct feeling of the participants.

What I learned about quantitative methods while studying my paper is that using quantitative methods allows people to measure and analyze data with less effort and material in a short time. They also allow researchers to collect statistical data that enable them to test their hypothesis efficiently and to make reasoning in an easier way.

In my opinion one main of the problems about the paper is that research was conducted only in Greece which provides instability of the results. As usage of social media is very dependent on culture same survey may resulted in a very different way in other countries. Moreover it only shows results in insurance industry so again social media usage of employees from other sectors probably differ from insurance sector. Advantages of social media could have been better analyzed via qualitative methods which could also make some differences in results.

The article “Physical activity, stress and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection” analyzes the relationship between physical activity level, perceived stress and self reported URTI through conducting a survey on 1509 Swedish man and women between the age of 20 and 60. Participant was asked to fill in a questionnaires for every three week period of time which had lasted for four months. At the end researchers found out that high physical activity is associated with lower risk of contracting URTI. Moreover according to the research results, mostly men who perceive high amount of stress, highly benefit from physical activity compared to the ones faces lower stress levels.

One of the main benefits of using quantitative research method is that it provides researchers a statistical data to support and prove their hypothesis. Moreover it allows researcher to collect huge amount of data from masses in a shorter amount of time. In other words it enables a larger scale of research. Whereas the collected data only shows results about specific time period, the time when the research is conducted so same study may provide different results in another period of time. Moreover if the research is made only on specific geographic space again same problem may occur same study may resulted in a different way in another place. As surveys provides predefined answers participants may give false answers as no stereotyped answer choices might reflect their thoughts. In my opinion those are the main disadvantages of quantitative research methods.

On the other hand using qualitative methods provide better understanding of the target audience. As it is used on small scaled groups it is less costly. However it only allows making assumptions about small group so results cannot be generalized to the rest of the population.

References

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.

Leftheriotis, I., M. N., Giannakos(2014) Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work?. Computers in Human Behaviour(31) 134-142.

Reflection on Theme 3

During this week's seminars I had a chance to discuss and learn more about journals and research papers in detail. People have chosen a variety of papers for our assignment which was particularly interesting for me to discuss. Furthermore discussions on definition of theory and examining what type of theory was used on our chosen research papers was very useful for me to understand the content more clearly.

During the first seminar we discussed about journals that we have chosen for the assignment. When I first started searching for a journal through several web sources, such as online libraries and scholar search sites, I struggled a lot on finding a proper journal with an impact factor over 1.0. Eventually I chose one from our course wiki. Because of this, in my opinion, learning about other journals through discussing their content with other people who have studied on them, would help me a lot on future assignments. Moreover examining other research papers and analyzing each research paper’s positive and negative sides such as, the way how they conclude theory, the way they use research methods, the way they present research results, the way they analyze the issues, the way they examine the facts and how they introduce their methods taught me a lot on analyzing and understanding a research paper. In short I can say that I have learned about what to look for while searching for a research paper.

During the second seminar session we have analyzed the theories that are used in our research papers. I can easily say that it helped me a lot on comprehending the term “theory” and the way it conducted in a paper. Seminar session also taught me where to search for the information about theory in a paper. I learned that theory, that the paper is based on, can be found after the introduction and before the method part. Sometimes theory can obviously be stated as "social … theory" in papers however more often description of a theory is given in text so that the reader should have figure out the name of the theory.

From the discussions about theory I have learned that we may either use existing theories or we may introduce our own theory by defining what type of theory used within the paper, as stated by Gregor(2006) Analysis, Explanation, Prediction, Explanation and Prediction and Design and Action, and describe the way it conducted. The important thing about theory is, it has to explain why, how, who(target group), under which circumstances events occur and connect this to a phenomena in a causal relation.

References

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

Scolari, A. C.(2013). Media Evolution: Emergence, Dominance, Survival, and Extinction in the Media Ecology. In: International Journal of Communication, Vol. 7, 1418-1441.

Theme 3: Research and Theory

I choose the International Journal of Communication which mainly focuses on communication whereas contributions from many other disciplines and approaches that intersects at some point with communication study also could be found within this journal. It has been publishing since 2007 by USC Annenberg Press. It has a impact factor of 1.5. The journal is accessible thorough the course web page on KTH Social.

I choose the article “Media Evolution: Emergence, Dominance, Survival, and Extinction” written by Carlos A. Scolari. The article was published on the 7^th volume of the journal International Journal of Communication in 2013.

Scolari presents an integrated model to explain the evolution of media, trying to go beyond the traditional perspectives that simplifies the media history to a linear succession of technologies. Article tries to construct a new model by means of going beyond the traditional concepts. It introduces categories such as emergence, adaptation, survival and extinction as a life-cycle stages of a medium. Article significantly underlines the importance of simulation process that undergoes at at every stage. It also criticize sequential-linear and genealogical-branched evolution models to introduce alternatives which represents the complexity of media ecosystem in a better way in writers point of view.

Theory is a collection of assumptions, propositions or accepted facts which tries to give advisable or rational explanation of causal relationships among set of observed facts. In short words it is an idea or collection of ideas which is intended to explain facts, events or phenomenons in relation to one another. Whereas references used for supporting the development of theory, data used for confirming, revising or discrediting theory, variables or constructs, alone without explaining why they come about or connected, diagrams and hypothesis used to strongly support the argument cannot be considered as theory. However all are significant parts of a theory.

Writer explains the traditional liner life-cycle models used to describe media eco-system. Moreover he shows how it corresponds to simplified version which consist of Emergence, Dominance, Survival and Extinction stages. After that he gives examples to clarify each stage, from real-life. Then he connects them to simulation and provides the integrated model. In my opinion the way he uses to support his theory matches the Explanation and Prediction type, according to the table presented in Gregor's paper.

In my opinion, using Explanation and Prediction type is beneficial in a way that it describes what the subject is in a clear understandable way, explains how, why and when things happened by mentioning causality and methods for argumentation and predicts future based on references, data, facts, examples. Whereas what is missing in this type of theory is that a clear definition of how predicted argument will be implemented, is not covered.

References

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

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

Scolari, A. C.(2013). Media Evolution: Emergence, Dominance, Survival, and Extinction in the Media Ecology. In: International Journal of Communication, Vol. 7, 1418-1441.

WebFinance, 2013. What is Theory – definition and meaning. [online] Available at: <http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/theory.html> [Accessed 22 November 2013].

Reflection on Theme 2

Having a chance to understand, analyze and examine this weeks content which I found particularly interesting, both in lecture and seminar was very useful for me.

Firstly the term “culture industry” that Horkheimer & Adorno have brought forward is quiet absorbing in my opinion. After I read the article and become familiar with the “culture indusry” and mass media I wonder how could the concept they raised almost seventy years ago matches completely to todays cultural structure. How come they proposed such a strong definition within their time?

Writers were left-winged members of German elite, professors of Frankfurt University. Both had a high intellectual background which made them to question about “how Germany, land of Nietzsche, Kant, Marx, Gothe, land of modernism, land of philosophy had turned into a place of terror, brutality, ferocity and barbarity?” all the time. They lived in exile in U.S during World War II, where they had a strong cultural shock because of the corrupted system made by “mass media” in US, especially by Hollywood products which influenced them to write the book “The Dialectic of Enlightenment” and propose an intense term “culture industry”. In my opinion since those days American “culture” starts to spread all over the world parallel to the propagation of American policy throughout the world. What they saw as a threat to productive human mind, intellectuality, enlightenment in American media in those days and defined by them as “mass media”, manipulates people to convert them into passive, non-productive and ultimate consumers of capitalism. In our daily life affects of American culture can be seen in everywhere regardless of the country borders, especially in a field of media. Facebook, twitter, youtube, google and many other social media items are made by Americans. That platforms are based on their culture. As discussed in seminar, if we consider those highly used social media platforms like facebook as a road, that road was built by Americans. They put the signs indicate where to stop where to speed up where to turn, on that road, they are the policeman on that road and we as non-Americans are the travelers on that road some of us walk on that road some goes by car some walk step by step that can also be considered as our cultural differences. I think what Adorno and Horkheimer defines as “culture indusry” was directly related with American cultural structure and life-style manipulated by American media. Eventually when world starts to globalize and when American products start to diffuse all around the world, what we see in today's communities directly matches what Adorno and Horkheimer saw in 1940s American community. Its like an old wine in new bottles.

On the other hand, another interesting topic discussed in seminar was about the art. A question “what is high art?”was asked during the seminar. In my opinion when we consider about art firstly we have to answer the question “Is art made for people or is it made for just art?”. If the answer is for people than as mentioned in seminar nudity or a pissoir can not be seen as art because one can make people excited and could easily be turned into a pornography and the other one, pissoir, in my opinion, exactly be rejected by people. Whereas if the answer is “art is just for art, itself” than every single object, created by an intellectual mind for the sake of art has to be considered as art. As some other mind, at least one, could also see that obstacle from the same perspective and may call it art.

Theme 2: Critical media studies

What is Enlightenment?

The way Adorno and Horkheimer used the term “enlightenment”, does not directly refer to the period of European Enlightenment, or mean particular scientific or philosophical period. However they mean it as a whole way of thinking which can be seen in Enlightenment Age in Europe. While explaining the “concept of enlightenment” they emphasize on understanding and cognize by rationality and reason. They underline the forms of knowledge studied by people, before enlightenment which are magic and myth and according to them enlightenment is disenchantment and demythologisation. It is about empiricism and positivism, it mainly center upon what can be sensed, systematized, measurable in math. There is not any place for the unknown in enlightenment so when we consider fear an unknown, enlightenment try to outlaw fear. For them enlightenment should translate the unknown into the system of numbers, physical laws and chemical components to make them be able to completely calculable and knowable which is the complete disenchantment and demythologisation.

What is the meaning and function of “myth” in Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument?

Myth is a form of knowledge what people studied before enlightenment. According to Adorno and Horkheimer myth is already and enlightenment as it attempts to understand, realize and explain the nature to control it. Myth is a form of enlightenment and if enlightenment rejects myth, that means a denial of its own sources. At the same time they also mentioned that Enlightenment reverts to myth.

What are the “old” and “new” media that are discussed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment?

Firstly as they explained the step from telephone to radio as a big movement as it turned everyone into listeners. So it could be said that here “telephone” was indicated as an “old” media whereas “radio” was as a “new” media. Moreover the way they explained the public's spontaneous wishes on seeing many things on air, an old classic Tolstoy novel could be an example of an “old” media whereas its movie version could be considered as “new” media. Furhermore televisions could also be an example of “new” media as they described it as a synthesis of radio and film.

What is meant by “culture industry”?

The term “culture industry” is used to describe the popular culture trend that directs the majority of people to the consume standardized cultural products of various media mediums such as movies, radio shows, magazines and televisions that leads people to passivity. According to Adorno and Horkheimer culture industry makes people to think about their artificial, false needs which are products of capitalism. On the other hand a real,true need for a human being could only be creativity, freedom, intellectuality and happiness.

What is the relationship between mass media and “mass deception”, according to Adorno and Horkheimer?

Mass media which is not produced by masses but produced for masses according to Adorno and Horkheimer were/are being used to manipulate masses to become consumers of capitalistic products. Mass media does not serve for people for their enlightenment instead it is/was used as a weapon/item to use them as slave by means of telling them what to read, watch, listen read and so on. However the way it was/is seen by the communities is just the opposite which is an actual deception.

For me the term “culture industry” is quite interesting. The way they describe this term in line with enlightenment is very ironic. As it is expected for masses to be enlightened with the help of the mediums of mass communication and interaction, what happened is just the opposite. When examine the societies today what I see is the clear example of the term “culture industry” itself. Communities are like programmed to consume what has served to them by “mass media” and capitalism. Despite having everything needed to feed their true needs like creativity, productivity, people prefer taking the factory produced,standardized products of capitalism. It is interesting to study Adorno and Horkheimer's thoughts on the same issue back in 1940s when in my opinion there were not many “weapons” of “mass destruction” to create mass deception.

References

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

Alparslan, N., 2008. Concept of Enlightenment – Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer. Cultural Studies and Literature Blog [blog] 28 November. Available at: <http://zenfloyd.blogspot.se/2008/11/concept-of-enlightenment-theodor-adorno.html > [Accessed 14 November 2013].

Wikipedia, 2013. Culture industry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [online] Available at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry > [Accessed 14 November 2013].

Reflection on Theme 1

As most of other people here have mentioned I would like to have a lecture and a seminar about this interesting topic. It would be very useful for me in order to understand the content more deeply by discussing other people's points of view and learning the lecturer's ideas.

I can easily say that before this assignment I did not read much about philosophy and my knowledge was a bit limited about it. That is why it was not easy for me to understand some parts of the books. However after I read Russell's book, I found the subject very interesting.

After reading other people's blogs I have found out that everyone commented on the content in their way of understanding which provides a variety of perspectives to examine. Through reading the words of these variety of ideas I have managed to find some answers for my questions. However what really confuses my mind is that: when we consider sense-data, as it is the knowledge obtained from our sensory percept of the environment surrounding us, is directly related with the our perspectives and points of views. According to what I learned while studying sense-data our mood, physiology, state of  our mind and condition of our health with the physical position of the object and many other parameters straightly effects the way we see the object and our perception. According to these factors our mind draws mental images, sense-datas. As a result we gain knowledge about the objects surrounds us which is so called “perceptual knowledge”- knowledge gained through experience by Russell. I understand that the knowledge by acquaintance is gained through experiencing and by creating many and many sense-datas about our vicinity. However when it comes to knowledge by description which is gained via intermediary actions such as learning from others point of view which can be considered as the perceptual knowledge of others. At this point comes my question: what if a sense-data which creates that perceptual knowledge was erroneous as I mentioned above and as Russell mentioned in his book, individual perception is easily affected and prone to errors. Wouldn't it mean that all knowledge by description is questionable? How can we trust our knowledge by description? Wouldn't it create an erroneous cycle of knowledge transferred from one to another and generations to other generations? Could it be the reason why we cannot say “yes” as an answer to Russell's question that he asked at the beginning of his book: “Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt?”

1) What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

At first Russell points out that knowledge obtained from our sensory percept of the environment surrounding us. However out sense of perception can is vulnerable and could easily be effected that could cause errors. People under different condition or mood can perceive the same object in many different ways. On the other hand position of the object could also cause different perceptions for viewers. At this point Russell uses the term sense-data to distinguish the difference between the appearance and reality. Sense-data is what we comprehend when we feel, sense something. For instance the smell of a fresh bread, coldness of the ice, color of the sky, hardness of the stone are examples of our sensations which are also sense-data according to Russell. Sense-data is what we picture in our minds when we sense something by sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. However sense-data can differs from person to person about the same object. Several people may have lots of sense-data yet they are looking at exactly the same object.

2) What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?

Proposition is explanations about an object. Many and many propositions derived from knowledge of description can be used to describe an object. For example to describe Napoleon Bonaparte “French Emperor”, “Loser of Waterloo Battle”, “a guy who marched his armies to the Russia” and so many other propositions can be used to describe him. Some of these can be facts and some can not be as we cannot go back in time and acquaintance all these propositions we only can know about him just by knowledge by description.

Propositions are also used to indicate primary carriers of the truth, what is believed and what is not believed, what is doubted in philosophy. They are also used to describe statement of an object. In genera l two plus two is four and this is a fact. However according to Russell proposition two plus two equals for can be different than three plus three equals six. It depends on the context.

3) In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

Russell divides human knowledge into two which are knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Knowledge by acquaintance is gained directly with experience, by directly awaring of it without any intermediary action. On the other hand knowledge by description is something that we are told to. For instance the pacific ocean is the greatest ocean in the world and this information is told us by others none of us have measured the all oceans and directly experienced that the pacific is the greatest ocean in the world. Russell distinguish 'description' into two, first one is ambiguous description that could be expressed in form of “a so-and-so” and the other one is definite description which is in the form of “the so-and-so”. In his example he mentions that “a man” is a ambiguous description that means here “a man” could be anyone, it is a very general expression that could be use to describe any person however in other example he uses “the man” to describe definite description here when he says “the man” he points to some specific person. When we describe someone with definite description in the form of “the so-and-so” it is known by description and there is no other object having the same certain property and in general we do not have any knowledge by acquaintance about it.

4)In chapter 13 ("Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion") and in chapter 14 ("The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge") Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

Firstly he gives mentions that “a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced from a fallacious process of reasoning even if the premises from which it is deduced are true”. He gives an example in which a man believes the last name of the prime minister starts with 'B' even it does not starts with B if that man knows the last prime minister whose surname actually starts with B he would still believe in what he knows is true. So here he strongly underlines that true belief should not be seen as knowledge as true belief could be derived from fallacious process. What a person believe(true belief) at the end could somehow appears to be correct yet it could not be considered as knowledge because the way to find premises was wrong from the beginning.

In chapter 14 Russell criticizes the belief of many philosophers which is to prove things like fundamental dogmas of religion, rationality of the universe, delusiveness of matter by a priori metaphysical reasoning. According to him such reasoning is useless as metaphysics is not able to acquire all the knowledge about the universe as whole.