Theory and Method for Media Technology: September 2015

Montag, 28. September 2015

Theme 2: Critical Media Studies (comments)

Theme 3: Research and Theory (after)

Last weeks theme was not my favourite. I already learned a lot about theories in my bachelor so it was more a repetition for me. Nevertheless reading the texts "The Nature of Theory in Information Systems" (Gregor) and "What Theory Is Not" (Sutton/Staw) was very interesting and I really liked the statements in the second text about what theory is NOT. As we discussed in the seminar it is difficult to find the one and only definition about what a theory is. Many factors, like the discipline in which the theory is created, the knowledge and situation at this time or the perspective on how one looks at a special case, are important to consider when describing what theory is. The discussion in the seminar showed very clearly how hard it is to bring up all the necessary components of theory.

This time I did not really feel that the lecture helped me understanding the themes most important point. I agree that the philosophical discussion about what is man is very interesting, but I did not get the link to what theory is. I liked the second part of the theme better, because choosing a journal and an article requires the practical use of all the theoretical things we learned until now and I could use lots of things I learned in my bachelor about the criteria of good research and what are benefits and limitations of different methods. Characterizing the theories used in the paper according to the table in Gregor's text was in the beginning a bit challenging and I needed to read most of the paper a second time to figure out where they fit best. During the lecture and the seminar I missed the discussion about how we choose our journal and the article from it. For me it was the most interesting part of theme 3.

Freitag, 25. September 2015

Theme 4: Quantitative Research (before)

1. Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
My chosen paper was published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (volume 20) and is called "Professional Personae - How Organizational Identification Shapes Online Identity in the Workplace", written by Christian Fieseler, Miriam Meckel and Giulina Ranzini. By the use of an Internet-based survey they collected 1862 questionnaires and were able to use 679 complete and correct filled in ones for continuing analysis. The 17 000 potential interviewees were contacted electronically and had time to fill out the survey within four weeks. Fieseler, Meckel and Ranzini focused on communication and marketing professionals who use digital and social media at work for job-related reasons. The biggest benefit of an Internet-based survey is that you can reach a big group of people and you do not need so much resources for it. The problem of an Internet-based surveys is that lots of people do not show interest and do not take part, so you need to have a very big database to reach enough people. Also you cannot control the answering-process of the participants, e.g. when more than one person answers questions in a questionnaire.

2. What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
When using quantitative methods you always have to be careful and really think your survey trough. Having a good sample and a high return rate is one big part of a survey but you need more to get results out of it. Designing and using a good analysis method is important to get results. Therefore combining different methods and strategies is often useful, because a method does not always cover all the necessary points. The paper shows how much effort you need to put into designing an online-questionnaire and how careful you need to be when analyzing the results. Just because participants answer a questionnaire does not mean that they answered all the questions totally honest. You always have to consider the personal situation of the person but also the situation of the interview. If somebody is in a hurry he or she would probably answer in a different way that he or she would when answering in a quiet moment.

3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?
The main methodological problem of the study is that an online-questionnaire can only capture a snap-shot of how the participants think and feel. When using an Internet-based survey you cannot control the environment where the participants answer the questionnaire. That could affect the way they answer it, as I already explained above. Another problem is that you only get the opinion from people who want to participate in the survey and you also do not get the reasons why many other people do not participate.

The most important key point in the paper "Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play" written by Konstantina Kilteni, Ilias Bergström and Mel Slater is "Immersive Virtual Reality". It means to transport people to a virtual place giving them the illusion that they are somebody else and trough that they loose the perception of their own body. In this paper the participants play drums and instead of seeing their own hands, they see the hands of a Caucasian formally dressed male or a dark-skinned casually dressed male. The aim of the paper was to find out if a virtual body ownership illusion can affect the perception and the behavior of the participants. It shows that virtual body ownership illusion could influence the behavior.

4. Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?
Quantitative methods are high standardized, which is on the one hand good for the work flow and the realization, but on the other hand results trough quantitative methods are more superficial. By the use of standardized techniques some details would not be able to collect. But quantitative methods allow a more structured and clear interpretation, because of all the statistics and data you get out of it.

5. Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?
Compared to quantitative methods the use of qualitative methods offer a wider range of getting detailed and in-deep information about a case. Qualitative methods allow a more flexible process when collecting data from participants. Therefore it is harder to analyze qualitative data because of the wide range of information you get.

Montag, 21. September 2015

Theme 2: Critical Media Studies (after)

After reading the text and attending the lecture I did some research about the authors, because I figured out that it helps a lot when you know about the current situation and their history to understand their texts. During the lecture I realized how important it is to be aware of all the factors, that influenced the author at that time. The different situations Benjamin and Adorno & Horkheimer had when writing their text clearly showed how much you can read between the lines just because of knowing about their situation.

At the seminar I really liked the example of Plato's allegory of the cave to clarify how Plato said that the concepts are real and not the perception of it. With the use of his example the real world is behind the brick wall where the fire is and not where the shadows are visible. The seminar helped me understanding the difference between Realism and Nominalism a lot. Nominalism says that concepts are only names and there is no such thing as a universal concept. The example given in the seminar was that just because somebody is a woman does not mean that she has long hair shows how Nominalism does not approve of universal concepts. The problem of Nominalism is that if you only register what is you cannot get any revolutionary potential. Adorno & Horkheimer say that Nominalism tends to repeat the structure we already know and does not have visions for the future. Therefore it cannot have revolutionary potential, because you need to think about the future to start a revolution. I did not really get the difference between Realism and Nominalism in the first place and I think that I got the meaning of them a little bit wrong, but after the seminar I really feel confident about it. I really liked the explanations of Henrik Åhman. I thought that I got the examples mentioned in the text right, but I needed the seminar to actually understand the difference between a painting and a picture of the painting.

The most important thing I learned during theme 2 is to not only read the texts but also spend some time on finding out who the authors are and in what historical context they wrote their texts. By having their history in mind it is so much easier to get what they want to tell in their writings.

Theme 1: Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Science (comments)

Freitag, 18. September 2015

Theme 3: Theory and Research (before)

I chose the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC) edited by S. Shyam Sundar (The Pennsylvania State University) because of its focus on social science research on communicating with computer-based media technology and its very interdisciplinary orientation. The impact factor is 3.117 and it has been published quarterly since June 1995.

My chosen article from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, published in volume 20 is called "The Double-Edged Sword: The Effects of Journalists' Social Media Activities on Audience Perceptions of Journalists and Their New Products" and written by Jayeon Lee. It deals with the impact of social media activities of journalists on the perception of the audience in relation to the personal and professional dimensions of journalists.

More and more young people consume news not anymore via news websites but via social media, like Facebook and Twitter. According to O'Sullivan (2005) news on social media are not only mass communication but "masspersonal" communication. The goal of the paper is to cover the lack of literature in journalism and computer-mediated communication about this masspersonal approach. One of the main terms related to this topic is objectivity and its importance for journalistic work. Journalists are known as objective gatekeeper for news and act as communicator between real events and the public. With the use of social media journalists build a personal relationship with their audience, which can affect the way the audience selects the news. Journalistic independence (and objectivity) has been one of the most important criteria for independent journalism. Dealing with more recent perspective, objectivity cannot be totally given, because everybody's history and former live influences his way of thinking about specific things. The use of social media creates the opportunity for a better self-disclosure (=process of making the self known, to others, allowing oneself to be perceived by others) and interaction with other users. Another important fact mentioned in the text is the need to belong, which can be fulfilled trough interaction with other users. By using social media journalists have to be aware of both social media norms but also the norms of journalism.

By performing an online experiment combined with a online questionnaire Lee tries to measure the influence of journalists use of social media on the audience. For the online experiment she used a made up Facebook profile, describing a journalist and showing different articles posted on the page. The factors audience perceptions, topic interest, knowledge of current affairs and media bias perception helped her to get to her results, which showed that the self-disclosure and interaction have a positive influence on the personal dimension, but show also a negative influence on the professional dimension of journalists.

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

A theory is an explanation of something that is tested through the use of scientific methods. Specific hypothesis have to be verified or falsified to create knowledge on which a new theory can be based. Theories help us understanding and structuring the world by showing us why something is done in a special way and how it is done. A theory is not just a list of statistics, hypothesis, scientific methods and sources.

2. Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type can the theory or theories be characterized as?

The major theory used in my selected paper can be put somewhere between "explanation and predication" and design and action. It illustrates very clear what is and what will be and it does provide a good prediction, but explicit prescriptions are not overall very detailed. By discussing how the use of social media by journalists is going to increase in the next couple of years, the necessity of changing some of the "rules of journalism" regarding objectivity is pointed out very clear, but concrete advices, methods and technique are not outstanding.

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

The most important benefit of using the selected theory is to clarify how important the use of social media for journalists is nowadays. People tend to emphasize more on from whom they get their news instead of just focusing on what the news are. The personal factor gets more and more important to deal with the big overflow of information that we have to manage every day. The limit of the selected theory is that it cannot provide us with specific advices what to do and how to behave in this ongoing change about objectivity and personal integration

Sonntag, 13. September 2015

Theme 1: Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Science (after)

To prepare for the first blogpost I spend a lot of time reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Plato's Theaetetus and figuring out which one are the most important thoughts in it. Furthermore I read some summaries of both texts to really get what the main points are. After the reading I was a bit confused about what they actually tried to say, especially when it came to Kant's a priori and a posteriori concept. By looking them up on google I thought that I understood what Kant meant. During the lecture I had to think a lot about what I read and what we were discussing. I figured out that I might have mixed up the understanding from Kant's a priori and a posteriori concept, but the seminar was supposed to help me clarify my confusion about that.

While discussing the for me most confusing part of the two texts (the a priori and a posteriori concept), it appeared that I was not the only one having problem with the understanding of them. We tried to figure out a "right" answer about it, by giving examples like E.T. showing up on the earth for the first time and pointing on something and using another word for it than we would. The most important progress I made in the last week was to get to know a better understanding of the difference between a priori and a posteriori knowledge and Kant's point of view on it. I also learned that knowledge about the world is always structured according to time and space, which made no sense at all to me in the beginning, but the seminar really helped me to understand it better. It says that objects need to be defined and structured and not only described. One of the most interesting relations, I already noticed while reading the texts the first time, was that the terms perception and experience are often used in context of Kant's sayings, but for me they refer more to Plato, because he was the one discussing the meaning of seeing and hearing "trough" our eyes and ears. That points out the close relation the two theories or point of views have.

Freitag, 11. September 2015

Theme 2: Critical Media Studies (before)

Dialectic of Enlightenment

1. What is "Enlightenment"?

Enlightenment can be understood as the advance of thoughts, power and totality, used to liberate people from fear and to form human beings as masters. The main goal of enlightenment is to make people more sceptic and to disenchant the world. It sees truth as superstition and anything that cannot be calculated and utilized is supposed to arouse suspicion. The aim of enlightenment is also to overtake the believes in fantasy and myths with knowledge. Human beings can free themselves from authorities (injustice, inequality and fear), because they have knowledge and can answer all the questions, which hitherto where answered by the authorities.

2. What is "Dialectic"?

Adorno and Horkheimer understand dialectic as the art of investigating and discussing the truth of opinions. Its focus is to find out the truth and to uncover false beliefs. They tie in with Plato's thoughts that knowledge is perception and one has to test which is the most truthful experience. That can only take place by investigating all the other possibilities that are not truthful.

3. What is "Nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

Nominalism is a theory that implies the understanding of physical and abstract things, which says that physical objects do exist and abstract objects do not. It concentrates on all the things we can see and does not question those things at all. Just as enlightenment says that anything that cannot be calculated and utilized has to be viewed with suspicion, myth and fantasy also do not exist regarding the concept of Nominalism. It is an important concept in the text, because being sceptic (enlightenment) is good, but also not questioning the society and trying to proof if something is right or wrong is the negative side of it. An example is the failed Enlightenment during the National Socialism, where Hitler based his arguments on abstract objects (e.g. one master race), which regarding to Nominalism cannot exist.

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

Myths were made up to explain all the things people did not understand and could not explain. The fear of the unknown is the main reason why people created myths. The main goal of Adorno and Horkheimer was to eliminate myths with real knowledge about things.

The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity
1. 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?

The concept of superstructure applies to culture and religion, which do not change very fast in the society. On the contrary the concept of substructure applies to economy and politics, which do change in a faster way and defines a society and the future. Superstructure and substructure depend on each other and analyzing them is important to get to know how people behave. According to Benjamin changes in the superstructure can only be understood by having a look at the substructure and its changes. By paying attention to the changes in the substructure, the process that forms and changes the superstructure can be influenced and intervened.

2. 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 says that culture does have a revolutionary potential and as examples he uses photography, which can have a revolutionary impact on society, and films, which can forward revolutionary criticism of social conditions. According to Benjamin culture has a revolutionary potential, instead Adorno and Horkheimer are saying that technology has a revolutionary potential.

3. 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).

Perception can be both naturally determined or historically determined, which implies that perception is inseparable from the existence in space and time. It is not only determined by how people see things but also with all the historical experiences that people have perceived in their lives. Nevertheless, perception can be changed very radical by certain experiences. An example, Benjamin points out in his work is the roman art, how it changed and so it changed the people and the way of how they see art. Another example given by Benjamin is photography and how it can capture historical moments, which also changed the way people see art.

4. 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 described by Benjamin as a unique part of objects, which focuses on the authenticity and originality of a work of art. He defines, that all natural objects have an aura, because they are unique and cannot be reproduced. Therefore, paintings are supposed to have an aura, but photography does not, because it is just an image of an image and can be reproduced. Also natural objects have according to Benjamin shadows, reflections and distance which creates a unique aura.

Freitag, 4. September 2015

Theme 1: Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Science (before)

1. 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?

Kant talks about a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge. A priori knowledge is said to be obtained through theories, more rational and called "the secure path of science". It is determining the object and its concept, which is theoretical, but also making the object actual and therefore a more practical perspective of it. A posteriori knowledge is based on experience with the object and obtained through empiricism, where already existing objects determine human cognition. According to Kant objects have to conform to our cognition, which is demonstrated in a priori knowledge, which is independent from experience.

As an example Kant talks about the Copernicus Theoreme where the common belief in celestial bodies traveling around the earth has been proved wrong by the fact, that the earth is moving around the sun. Although previous knowledge said that the sun is moving around the earth Copernicus refuted it by not limiting himself to previous knowledge,"thinking out of his box", and assuming the contrary that the galaxy is conforming to his cognition.

In my opinion it is important to combine both a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge and the relation between cognition and objects. Copernicus success with his a priori approach, conforming to his cognition, can be dedicated to his a posteriori knowledge, the knowledge he already had about the subject.

2. 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"?

Everybody perceives and experiences things in a different way, therefore things appear to each one different. Socrates talks about knowledge as a matter of perception and focuses on questioning the core concept of knowledge. That leads to the discussion of what the definition of knowledge is. Seeing and hearing "through" eyes and ears and not "with" means, that going with the preposition "with" we would only receive information. Our brain receives information that we see and hear "with" our eyes and ears. But the use of the word "through" says that we do not only receive information, but we experience and perceive the information captured through our eyes and ears. Knowledge is mostly what somebody has said once, so criticizing and questioning previous knowledge, studies and research has become more important. Everything can be seen in different perspectives and depending on the perspective there are different interpretations of different subjects.

Empiricism says that knowledge comes only and primarily from sensory experience, what differs from Kant's way of defining knowledge. Plato says that knowledge is created from many factors.

Nowadays empirical methods are based on Kant's theory of a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge. Forming a hypotheses using a priori assumptions created with our mind and verifying the hypotheses with the use of empirical research methods, using a posteriori cognition as starting basis, to measure experience and perception shows that there is no a posteriori knowledge without a priori knowledge and also the other way round. For creating knowledge we need to question existing knowledge, stop thinking too binary and start thinking outside our previous knowledge.

However it is important to keep both theories of Kant and Plato in mind, because both have a strong influence on todays creating of knowledge.