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].