COMMENTS aka the final blog post

WEEK 1

1.
Katerina, it is a great thing that you've chosen this article, even if you do not use Twitter :)

Now, when you started, what do you thing the most complicated about Twitter?
Usually researchers talk about its shortness and the too intense usage of hyperlinks with no actual articulated information.
http://mediatechnologymethod.blogspot.se/2012/10/first-theme-research-journal-i-chose.html?showComment=1351696665482#c6360235832180433111

2.
Fernanda, I liked your article choice, but what the three most common emoticons are?
(According to this research).
Although there are really different cultures of using the emotional symbols, I assume that the most popular one is this :)
http://fcfkth.blogspot.se/2012/10/the-white-rabbit-theme-1-research.html?showComment=1351696041232#c5687970978689783634

3.
>I must confess that I tried for more than two hours to look for a research paper that would present the characteristics implied as an excellent theory.

Fernanda, I did the same!!! :)

This made me think, why it is so difficult to produce a new convincing theory nowadays - because human knowledge is so wide, or because we are fixed on the things we already know and do not want to accept something new. There should be another options, of course :) What is your opinion?
http://fcfkth.blogspot.se/2012/11/emc-theme-2-theory.html?showComment=1352330229310#c2918838325889941452

4.
Nicole, I would love to read the article of your choice!


I have seen a lot of tv-series promo actions on Twitter, starting from script-writers' twitters full of teasers to virtual twitters of TV heroes, but it seems there is no research on this subject at all. 
Does this research show how much profit this kind of promo activity gives?
http://dm25722012.blogspot.se/2012/10/theme-1-research-publicationstheory-of.html?showComment=1351697075818#c553665883685881207

5.
Marina, how do you think, is it possible for the media company nowadays to exist without any social network services? Personally, I think that this is the very important part of the image and can work positive for a company's status, but still some media prefer not to interact with their readers online.
http://mediatechnow.blogspot.se/2012/10/theme-1.html?showComment=1351695723141#c1944269165161873023

6.
Your choice of article is very interesting, since we talked about the idealized image of a person on Facebook, and discussed it a lot, basing on Sherry Turkle's book. She pointed out that Facebook made us lonelier, while this research shows something different completely!
http://johan-dm2572.blogspot.se/2012/10/theme-1.html?showComment=1351696346399#c3197181538015510868


WEEK 2

1.
Katerina, we've discussed your chosen article and its theory during today's seminar, and I found it very interesting. I have experienced this effect myself, working with advertising, and this is just another type, or side, of media Convergence, I believe.

Also this separation between Central Processing = multi source condition and Peripheral Processing = repetition condition makes it quite easy to talk about how we receive the advert, and feel about it - IMHO, Peripheral Processing is much more annoying, heretofore less effective.
http://mediatechnologymethod.blogspot.se/2012/11/second-theme-question-1-what-theory-is.html?showComment=1352327292748#c2214580017871381312

2.
This is an interesting article, Nicole, thank you! =)

Taking the "Global village effect" in this context, it should be obvious that media interactivity makes audience participation level higher, not lower. Now I am trying to think of any web activity created by media that can be not appreciated by audience!
http://dm25722012.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-2-theoryor-what-is-it-not.html?showComment=1352320866939#c3034353009380245288

3.
Marina, I have googled and enjoyed your article very much!

This topic is very important, I believe, for our countries. The aspect of youth participation in political activities is currently almost vital, as we can see from various social media resources.
We had our small "Facebook Revolution" last winter in Russia, political activities in your country are also visible online. Personally, I think that Internet stimulates political awareness among youngsters. But Evgeny Morozov (http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/dss/v056/56.4.morozov.html) pointed out that "Twitter Revolution" in Iran has nothing to do with Twitter. I think it is not true. What is your opinion?
http://mediatechnow.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-2.html?showComment=1352325985833#c7768352781436217325

4.
I love this article! Its subject is very close to the theme of Day Gillmore's book “We the media – grassroots journalism by the people, for the people”, and shows that Citizen Journalism is about these "grassroots" who nowadays become proper news makers.

It is also interesting to read about social news, as we have much more of this sort of media information today, _exactly_ because of the citizen activity online!
http://tmm12.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-2.html

5.
I liked reading this article a lot, thank you for the link!

I believe that CouchSurfing is not a typical online social network, and it was difficult to me to apply the abovementioned framework in this case.

Do you personally think that virtual communities can be defined by the geographical location (especially with CS example, it sounds like a joke to me :))? IMHO it is the last thing, but, of course, language plays the important role.
http://dm2572-jussis.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-2.html

6.
Hej Mattias,

it was very interesting to discuss the article of your choice during the seminar, formulate the definition of Social cognitive theory, and read about all these theories! I am still not sure which type of theory we do see here - for me there are both design & action and also explanation & prediction as authors do explain what kind of result will be achieved after some particular actions...  Anyway, it is a great research with a variety of theories included, thank you for finding this paper!
http://dm2572-maoster.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-2-teory.html?showComment=1352116982718#c466775766703651189

7.
No, it is Mary - http://mshelukho.blogspot.se/2012/10/reflections-aftertheme1.html

I am not that serious into philosophy, so I cannot possible agree/disagree with Russel :) I've never read Rawls, but now I see that he is definitely interesting! Kant's style of writing seems very clear to me, as I can understand his ideas, especially connections between happiness and moral. As a teen I thought that his book is a logical version of Bible :)

And I agree with you, sometimes Russels arguments are weak, and more like 'I don't like this idea', but, as we've been told on the seminar, 'Philosophy is a discipline of gentleman's, and if you are accusing someone, you do it gently'. :)
http://tdm2572.blogspot.se/2012/10/first-week-reflections.html?showComment=1351767082432#c2753429981647508133


WEEK 3

1.
Diana, I love the way you compare Excel and SPSS, as at first I decided that SPSS is actually an application for Excel :)

It looks for me like SPSS was created for journalists who struggle with mathematical style of Excel (that's me!), and it instantly turns figures into visual material.
Regarding the book, Nicholas Walliman. Sociological research methods, - it is great that you found it, thank you, it could be really helpful for my thesis paper - is it available online? Tack :)
http://mediameth.blogspot.se/2012/11/the-third-week-of-tmmt-studies.html?showComment=1352993718052#c439749865150061073

2.
Nicole, you made me think about online learning more, than Martha Cleveland-Innes!

I don't have much experience with e-learning, and personally I always thought that the only one advantage of it that one can do distance learning, no need to be in the right time/place, that's all.
But you cannot get a proper *Lecture* feeling if you are sitting next to the computer at home, do you? How does it work with the involvement, serious atmosphere, or the dialog with the teacher? In my opinion, it must be a bit less productive, ...or the lecturer must be a genius!
http://dm25722012.blogspot.se/2012/11/reflection-on-theme-3.html?showComment=1352984307391#c6331462520977759229

3.
Fernanda, I really like this video, and another one, with grown-ups in the same situation :)

Actually I looked into various types of Sampling Methods already, I think that this site has the best definitions of all the types, Random especially, and gives the chance to understand the differences -> http://www.statpac.com/surveys/sampling.htm

Wikipedia is also very good, but also confusing (e.g. "simple random sampling should not be confused with random sampling" -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_random_sample). Probably we should edit it :)
http://fcfkth.blogspot.se/2012/11/the-marshmallow-experiment-reflections.html?showComment=1353006449547#c6337786132293127549

4.
>because a student can easily become a teacher while studying online.

Marina, I don't understand this bit, to say the truth :) On the contrary, I understand how a student can be a teacher during 'offline' learning - he/she can explain things to the students sitting nearby, but with online study it is always easier to google something you don't understand than ask other students... So I believe this statement means something else!
http://mediatechnow.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-3-reflection.html?showComment=1352992764576#c8491993021154844676


5.
Hej Johan,

I found this article quite interesting and very illustrative. Moreover, I got curious and decided to read it, as it has been chosen by another student, Sanna, as you probably know :) http://sannadm2572.blogspot.se/ In the post Sanna also talks about the Grounded theory method as a part of qualitative research, which was also used here.

I absolutely agree with you on the point of the biased representation when dealing with archives, but it is the same with “purposefully” chosen websites and the detailed interviews as well. It is easy to make questionnaires objective, but proper interviews often lead to the personal perception.
So to me, as far, most of the qualitative research methods seem to be biased, if not made with proper 'randomness' and (preferably) analysed by different scientists, not only one.
http://jblomg.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-4.html

6.
Hej Sanna,

Thank you for your choice of the article, I've read it and found the subject quite interesting: the text itself is very illustrative, but, to my mind, not very scientific. As you probably have seen already, this article has been chosen by another student, Johan :) http://jblomg.blogspot.se/ - so reading two posts and the text itself made me feel like we had a collective discussion.

You've introduced me to a term 'Grounded theory' and I googled it a bit; it is great to finally have an example of work that is not based on a theoretical framework.
You use a world 'unreliable' when talking about the data that can be incorrect or subjective - I totally agree here, and actually I feel that all the methods used in this research could be considered as biased, as everything here is based on personal perception. But probably this is the way how the qualitative research works!
http://sannadm2572.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-4.html

7.
Thank you for the comment, Stefan!

Indeed, hypotheses should be based on observations and, as stupid as it could sound, on initial intuition - I think this is the basis of scientific endeavour.

The Wiki editing exercise was especially useful for this reason: some of us got the editors job, and some were writing the definition from the beginning. As a journalist I know that both tasks are really important: sometimes it is more difficult to improve somebody's text than to write your own.

As to the Wiki content for the next year - IMHO students must work on their definitions. As far we had only "Theory" - this one should be done again, but the additional information (examples of theories, papers) is very useful and it would be a pity to lose these findings!
http://tdm2572.blogspot.se/2012/11/second-week-reflections.html?showComment=1353005617198#c6745352030129331255


WEEK 4

1. 
Sebastian,

Thank you very much for creating the graph, it is very illustrative. I would also like to add (and you are more than welcome to correct me) that you cannot call the discussing/philosophizing 'non-structured': these forms of analysing have some very strict rules, such as hypothesis = thesis - antithesis - synthesis, which is embodied in modern philosophy of science.
http://tamfmtsebastian.blogspot.se/2012/11/0-0-1-388-2212-kth-18-5-2595-14.html

2. 
Hej Bart, and thank you for the links!

I also found the part about triangulation in qualitative research very interesting, as actually now I feel that triangulation is a necessity in the qualitative research, even if it can make the process much more complicated and even misleading. I also found an article called 'The use of Triangulation in Social Sciences Research' (http://jcsw.no/local/media/jcsw/docs/jcsw_issue_2009_1_8_article.pdf) and strongly advice it to everyone: it helps to understand how can qualitative and quantitative methods be combined.
http://tmm12.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-4-reflections-upon-completion.html

3. 
Hej Markus!

The topic of your chosen article is very interesting. I wonder if it is clear from the research what type of sampling has been used?
Also, if to 'dig deeper into the reasons of the choice of when and to whom they share this information' it would be interesting to connect this research with a book “Privacy in a noisy society” by Niklas Lundblad (www.sics.se/privacy/wholes2004/papers/lundblad.pdf), which I strongly recommend! :)
http://dm2572warne.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-4.html?showComment=1353599014517#c8214426146104242357

4.
I like the way how they did the sampling and double interviews. It is, indeed, an example of a good research, even if the data and the researcher's conclusions are subjective, there are no ways to avoid this, as the study is about the self-expression.

Also, the method this research uses, with presenting hypothetical scenarios to the interviewee, is taken from psychological practices and it is nice to know that we are free to use it while dealing with new media issues.
Thank you for the article you found!
http://dm2572-jussis.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-4.html

5.
Thank you for this article!

It was extremely interesting to listen to your findings during the seminar, so I found this paper and read it. I agree that the methods used here are close to the ethnographic research, and also media studies, as author describes some broadcasting technics.
Actually, this reminded me of the Crowd psychology theory (www.wisegeek.com/what-is-crowd-psychology.htm) and Theodor Adorno's views on propaganda, and I really hope it is my personal opinion or the dark impression after reading this paper, but not the reality!
http://sepehramoorpour.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-4.html

6.
Hej Nicklas,

I like your choice of the article, as this subject is not well-covered yet. Still, the podcasts producing is growing worldwide and it is good to see such research.

I totally agree that it is definitely not a right way to deal with questionnaires in such an open fashion: submissions must be anonymous and must be created through private channels, as it is almost a first rule for a researcher: not to let interviewees to see the answers of each other, as it can demotivate (*one has written it already, so I should write something new, or nothing at all, or just agree with them*). Also this study needs some quantitative data, for sure, as this field currently lacks of the accurate, relevant and up-to-date statistics.
http://dm2572nicklas.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-4-before.html?showComment=1353601843112#c466921769250821279


WEEK 5

1. 
Hej Miriam,

I also find this topic quite interesting :) Today I've read a good paper on this subject "What Do Prototypes Prototype?". In Helander, M; Landauer, T; Prabhu, P. Handbook of Human–Computer Interaction. (http://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/ict4se/files/2010/09/Prototypes_prototype.pdf)

Actually, as we can see from the practice, usually prototypes are much more expensive than the product that developers get in the end. It is a usual way of work: firstly they try to create a "perfect" product with immaculate capacities/parameters, to prove that the concept works. After that they have the task to reduce the production expenditures. The best example are cosmetics: the first series of products are usually much better as they are released altogether with promo campaigns, but later product's quality usually becomes lower.
http://tdm2572.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-5.html?showComment=1354145614830#c8503372371510035736

2.
Hey Florian,

In my opinion, this research is not complete. If we go to the terms: the word 'empirical' means something derived from actual experience, and 'theoretical' means something is that derived from thinking. (http://www.accessscience.com)
So yes, we can say that this actDresses survey is empirical as authors got some actual experience while working with robots, but this is *their* experience during the experiment, and no evaluation can be made.
Still, they got this empirical evidence which is synonymous with the outcome of an experiment, and can discuss it as a result. But personally, I believe that this empirical result should have more confirmation from the user study.
http://tdm2572.blogspot.se/2012/11/fourth-week-reflections.html?showComment=1354144752215#c6348478020096121317

3.
Hej Jacob,

I love the discussion on the media technologies evaluation that is going here, and want to add one thought.
Of course, personal experience is a vital factor, as well as cultural differences and even individual preferences. Still, it is possible to discuss and even evaluate these things. The subject of your paper is close to Dr. Martha Cleveland-Innes analysis of emotions and their impact on the learning process, and should be done in a similar way at least in one part: a serious random sampling and mixed method of research are needed, and three students are obviously not representative. The number of 300, or 3000 would work better :)
http://jacobkth.blogspot.se/2012/11/assignment-5.html

4.
Hej Daniel,

Thank you for introducing me to the idea of Mockups! :) I used it in web design all the time without knowing the right term for it. But the things they provide for the example in your link are quite obvious: these are paper prototypes, very useful for the manual design. I went to Wikipedia to see more examples (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockup) and was surprised. If "a mockup is a prototype that provides at least part of the functionality of a system and enables testing of a design," how can it be possible to do mockups for automobiles and space shuttles? I am still sure that it is a good way to see how the object would look, and nothing more, so it is useful for designers mostly.
http://daneri4.blogspot.se/2012/11/reflections-theme-5.html

5.
Hey Mattias,

I find your question about the repetitive cycle of testing in design research very important. Personally, I think that iterative user testing is a vital part of any design work, and it is a pity that it is not used most of the times, according to the various papers we read during last weeks.

I also found a good article on this subject, http://www.ericzimmerman.com/texts/Iterative_Design.html - "Play as Research: The Iterative Design Process" by Eric Zimmerman, CEO of Gamelab, and loved the idea (which is quite obvious if you think of it, but it was not presented during our studies as far) that the prototype should be evaluated by 2 groups during the iterations: 1) a focus group, 2) a group not associated with the previous product work - in order to get non-biased opinions.
http://dm2572-maoster.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-5-reflections.html?showComment=1354189144965#c1012651922859894522

6.

Hej Emma,

I like your approach to the subject, I also went to the books you've read and can say that I find them more useful than the lecture, so you've done a good work :)
You are absolutely right talking about the understanding-explaining-improving scheme, based on the grounded theory, but actually another the most important part of the process is the prototype (artifact) development, its testing and evaluation. That's why this kind of research is very practical! Imagination is very important, as a key to the creativity.

I would like to add one thing, a link: A Case Study of Iterative Prototyping - it is a very entertaining case study in Design research made by British scientists, with pictures and great examples of how the prototyping works, with a great deal of imagination! :)
http://vislab.cs.vt.edu/~quek/Classes/Aware%2BEmbodiedInteraction/PAPERS/Stretal05.pdf

http://dm2572emmafrid.blogspot.se/2012/11/reflections-on-theme-5-design-reserach.html?showComment=1354194123079#c1750673914775045198

Fifth Week, Reflections

Theory

Haibo Li's lecture was based on the engineers point of view, and basically it was about the ways of how the idea is becoming the prototype. He also talked about design technologies and prototype research, and how the most simple solution is usually one the hardest to find. His discussion on the usability analysis helped to understand why this is a good measurement of a prototype. He also mentioned the three parameters of the prototype usability, which we have learned from the paper: effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction.

Pictures and video examples were quite interesting and funny (bear, tunnel vision metaphors, especially Rowan Atkinson part), although I doubt that this information would actually help in the research work. Overall, we have seen the most of that presentation already during previous Haibo Li's lecture in September. 
Nevertheless, one motivation picture was very inspiring: smiling Mark Zuckerberg and the words that the great new projects are not about some new technology, but about the creative ideas, so they can easily be based on something that was invented before you.


Practice

The this week seminar task – to draw the visual structure of our articles based on the research design - was both interesting and challenging. We felt that our papers have the same structure, going from theory and previous background to the hypothesis, prototype creation, its testing and evaluation. Previous groups have downloaded the graphs of this kind already. That is why we decided to go deeper and took two of the most complicated papers from our group findings to work with. 

After our detailed discussion it was great to listen to other sorts of design research, with some variables on the every step of research. It also was very good to have a visual proof, as the graphs we all created were quite different. 
The Beau Armstrong's paper, which we had chance to learn in details due to the great slides, made me think about the actual prototyping work. I wanted to go deeper in this field, and found more literature on this subject. Thus, sometimes theory is much easier to create than to embody it into a real object. Before the tests there is a long work on the prototypes development and improvement. I found this paper quite helpful and advice it to everyone: "What Do Prototypes Prototype?". In Helander, M; Landauer, T; Prabhu, P. Handbook of Human–Computer Interaction.

Theme 5

The paper “Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration” is a very good example of design research which provides a full picture of how the idea could be presented and how the results should be evaluated. Researchers test their experimental findings based on vibration and video analysis in order to show how to work with new techniques. There is also an efficient work with focus groups. Personally, I believe this type of concept prototype is very effective, moreover, the paper itself provides the answers to these questions:

How can media technologies be evaluated?

Following the article we can point out some steps of evaluating of the new media technologies, such as testing its usability, by actual involvement of the potential users in the process:
1) Effectiveness, which means that the technology is working successfully with the specified system;
2) Efficiency, which means that there is not much effort needed to work with the technology;
3) User satisfaction, which means that the technology is accepted by its users as comfortable.

At the same time it is important for the researchers to organise this kind of testing carefully, to think about the motivations and the right choice of participants. In this example it was important to remember that the analysis showed that the testing had a significant effect on the effectiveness, but not on efficiency in the usability evaluation, so when the participants moved from the first experiment to the second one, they were more experienced in this task, theretofore the results were less representative.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes? 

A prototype is not fully implemented or tested, it is sample of a product, built to test a concept or an idea, and evaluate the product throughout the testing process. This quality can be considered as both strength and limitation, as it is something to work on, which is not finished or a standard, but this is a way to prevent mistakes and work on a better design of the product. A prototype can be very expensive to produce and still would not make a good representation of the final product, which is time and resources consuming. In the result, prototypes sometimes are quite cheap to build, but this mean a low fidelity of this prototype. It is difficult to create prototype with all the possible functionality on the early stages of work, so in some cases it is a 'time versus money' issue.


I found an article “An alternate reality game for language learning: ARGuing for multilingual motivation” in the journal “Computers & Education” (IP = 2.621).

ARGuing for multilingual motivation in Web 2.0 is a profound, high quality media technology research that discusses how the design and evaluation of an alternate reality game (ARG) can motivate and engage young people in  language learning.

How is theory being used to guide the design process?
Researchers used some original theories, describing what is the ARG and discussing its educational, and even collective value. Theoretical work is based on features of ARGs: development of the game, a game “look-and-feel”, effectiveness of the usage by both students and teachers.

Which research method or methods are used in the paper? 
To accompany the use of the Alternate Reality Game (ARG), a methodology has being developed within WP3 ‘Develop Methodology’. It was discussed during the conference and the evaluation within specialists and the selected users, so basically the quantitative methods used here are the case study, questionnaires and interviews, while qualitative methods were helping during the evaluation process.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
Case study as a form of observation is well-detailed and gives a good impression of the product. As various questionnaires were used at different stages of the development, it was important to make a right sampling. Large-scale pilot of the game was tested across Europe with 328 students and 95 teachers from 28 schools across 17 European countries. The survey describes the participants and their thoughts on the product, but, in my opinion, the form of а diary would work better here. Answering questions, users give their opinion, but do not describe their full experience of a work with educational program on a daily basis.

What did you learn about conducting design research from reading the paper?
This paper gives a deep inside overview at the work of the game developers and helps to understand that the evaluation process and constant feedback are vitally important in design research. Also, to make a user analysis and evaluate results of experiments, mixed methods of research should be used: both qualitative and quantitative, in order to support concepts and  confirm hypotheses.

Fourth Week, Reflections

Theory

This week we focused on qualitative methods of research and attended a lecture by Ylva Fernaeus, during which she talked about the paper “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” which was written by her and M. Jacobsson.
Basically, this article can be considered as a research in tangible interaction: it is a study about the semiotics usage. As we know, semiotic discusses signs and sign systems - in the research signs were used to personalize robots and make the work with them easier, by putting the garments on robots and analyzing how this relates to human behavior.

There was an interesting point to me during the lecture when we discussed the nature of empirical knowledge, as it is difficult to say if the survey with actDresses can be considered as a research with empirical methods or not. Authors have a hypothesis that robots can obtain some psychological characteristics, as people tend to personalize their robots (aka laptops, mobile devices, gadgets) - at the same time there is no proofs, or actual samplings, so it is a purely theoretically designed research, that should be discussed and taken further.

During the second part of the lecture we reflected on the content of this article, answering questions from the lecturer, such us “How statistics could help make this paper better?” etc. At the same time it was great to feel the difference between the research and corporate product designs, as Ylva also told us about this distinction: while the research product design means sharing the knowledge with others, creating the Grounded theory (BTW it is a very interesting site if you looking for some help in your research work: Grounded Theory Online), the corporate product design meansinventing products without any knowledge being shared.


Practice

We continued to edit the Wiki pages and study different research methods. I found our discussion during the seminar very interesting and funny, because everyone has something to reflect on in their chosen papers. This practice also helped me to categorize the methods clearly in my mind.
We also decided to look at advantages of various qualitative methods more than on its disadvantages, as the last part was done quite properly already, so we worked on the former.

Personally I found this seminar helpful also because it introduced me to the triangulation technique which I was going to use in my research without knowing a name for it (a good description is here: The use of Triangulation in Social Sciences Research, Journal of Comparative Social Work 2009/1), and also the open coding as a qualitative method which can be used to analyze textual content.

The main result of the week: I know that qualitative research methods look subjective sometimes, because the conclusions made on its basis depend on human interpretation, so this is the reason to use various types of research to prove your findings; and I also found a book which helped me to categorize all the methods and gave the tools to imply them, maybe it could be helpful for you, too, even if it says it is for librarians only: Basic Research Methods for Librarians, Powell, Ronald R. (1997).

Theme 4

I selected a media technology research paper "Social news, citizen journalism and democracy" from "New Media and Society" (2011 Impact Factor: 1.394). Its author Luke Goode uses qualitative methods in a good, and also most traditional way, I believe: in a form of the case study.

After giving the detailed information and discussing some theories on the subject of citizen journalism and new media author moves to the practical examples. He supports his theories with the cases of three chosen Web 2.0 Social News Websites. Luke Goode gives a detailed description of these websites: Digg.com, Guerilla News Network, Newsvine. He provides a historical overview for each site, describes its functions and audiences. 

Personally, I find the case study very illustrative and easy to analyse. It gives comprehensive data and therefore helps to make more accurate hypotheses. 

Still, the important difference from the quantitative method of research is that data here cannot be random. The researcher chooses the object, which is usually unique, or the most outstanding. It makes the observations limited. Also, qualitative method can look subjective, as the researcher works with the examples of his choice, it makes this analysis look a bit less scientific, but still qualitative method is perfect for the analysis in philosophy, psychology, sociology etc., because it helps to see the dynamics, a time-line of the event or phenomena, as in this paper.

As to the methodological problems of this study, I am positive that the author could use more examples and more types of research methods also, such as interviewing and participant observation. Nevertheless, Luke Goode proposes the usage of various methods when talking about further research, hopefully they will include more personal involvement into the subject.

The question of the article «Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses» by Fernaeus and Jacobsson actDresses is about the usage of actual physical clothing, labels, and accessories in order to control machines. The term for this symbols is «actDresses», and it helps to personalize digital devices, as humans like to anthropomorphize objects. 

ActDresses are meant to represent and produce perceivable actions in the computerised system, being shown in the immediate physical context of the object having the feature represented by the sign. There are two main examples in the paper: fashion style and comics can be used as an inspiration for the design of visual programming languages, and these clothing and labels can help to control the behaviour of digital devices. 

Having a background in fashion and also in psychology, I can see the point of this innovation: it is entertaining, makes it easier to memorize and act accordingly to the functions of the machines. I also can see a potential marketing profit. Personally, I found this research quite exciting and psychologically helpful, as it is always great to have anthropomorphic devices, but I also can understand scientists who would find it a waste of time and resources.

Question: How to make qualitative methods of research maximally objective?

Third Week, Reflections

Theory


It was very interesting to listen to a person whose article you have read two days ago, and understand some points that were left unclear during the reading. 

Dr. Martha Cleveland-Innes told us about quantitative methods and her actual practice of using them in her research of online and distance learning. She explained how she used quantitative methods in her analysis of emotions and their impact on the learning process. She also pointed out that online education is more effective than "offline" learning, but, according to her, the most useful type of studying is a blended environment that mixes both of face to face and online activities. 

Personally, I still find it impossible to research emotions using such criterias as gender and age, as it is a deeply psychological question, but now I understand how this research process works.

On example of this research, among others, Martha gave us a good picture of situations when we should use a quantitative method, and what is the difference between using a quantitative and a qualitative method. 
She explained how to do sampling and made the "random sampling" principle very clear. The more random is data, the more chances to increase an experimental noise, which leads to new results of research, if correct analysis and understanding of data were applied, of course.

Mixed method of research is more demanding, but makes it possible combine data from different sources, and gives more precise results at the end, still it is difficult to analyse all the data, make correct questions and hypothesis.

It was nice to have a dialogue with a lecturer, and get a positive response, discussing such points as what questions should be asked when deciding what method to use, or logical principles of analysis, deduction or induction. 

Dr. Martha Cleveland-Innes recommended us the book, "The Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research" by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber, which I find really helpful. It is very useful for our group project already, as it discusses the benefits and misuses of new technologies usage in the research process. 
Martha shared her thoughts on this topic: she is sure that we should use modern technologies in order to get data, and I am totally agree, so it is very good to be able to see now also the disadvantages of this method of data gathering.



Practice

Ester Appelgren introduced us to SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) program, which is very useful for the survey analysis, and helps to visualize quantitative research methods. Previously I used Excel only, so the differences are obvious.

During the lab I built one multiple response variable, using the data on the subject of radio listening, another one was a split variable, differentiated between gender and age groups.

It was really easy to get the results (when SPSS was working, which was - not always) and to analyse this variable data in a graphic/table view. For example, I learned that podcast radio in Sweden is mostly popular among male teenagers - SPSS made this data literally illustrative.

Theme 3

Both articles are very helpful in understanding of how the quantitative methods of research work, and, even more interesting to me, both discuss the topic of online education, which is becoming very popular and important nowadays.


 “Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement” by Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. (2009) 

The main question of this paper is how a low quality of research on online learning can be improved. This introduces the mixed research in Data Analysis, which is a new, multiple method of collecting data.
The purpose of study is exploratory, as researchers are trying to bring up the new method into actual usage, and explain its elements. 
Basically, mixed research is a research strategy that combines both quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to create a more valid way to perform a research. This may result in better ways of providing online-learning, which currently has a lot of disadvantages comparing to traditional way of learning, as the authors point out. 
Speaking about qualitative analysis, it should be verified by comparative analysis with such methods as counting of the number of words, keywords, content, domain analysis, taxonomic and component analysis, social presence etc. 
There are some tools, or collecting methods, that they discuss: research questions (both quantitative and qualitative), samples etc. There are also various lists of examples of how a researcher should perform the analysis. For example, the most interesting for me are Seven stages of the data analysis process: data reduction, data display, data transformation, data correlation, data consolidation, data comparison, and data integratio.

Authors say that mixed studies on the subject are difficult to perform, nevertheless, using both quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis would be highly effective.

I agree that this way of research work can definitely increase the quality of research, and not only regarding the subject of online learning. In this particular case it would make the process of research highly productive. I think that this method is a good way to combine the best parts of qualitative and quantitative analysis. Still, sometimes it could be difficult to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data, and also the usage of multiple methods will make the research process longer, but its results will be more valuable.


 “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment” by Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. 

The main question of this paper is the presence of emotion in online learning. 
The purpose of study is explanatory, as authors discuss if emotions influence on the process of online learning.
They use mixed methods of research: the quantitative data is collected from surveys and interviews (conference discussion transcripts), the qualitative data is taken from the questions in the survey (217 students of distance education programmes). 

The conclusion is that emotion is a prominent experience in the online environment that may be distracting, but also may support ideas, be stimulating, if managed correctly. This is teachers’ responsibility: «Consideration of the appropriate response is needed [...] Instructors can model emotional response […] and teach how to bring emotion to consciousness and make use of the emotional state in a learning situation».

Researchers still left many questions for further discussions, like what is emotions influence on organization and direct instruction, or are where some specific emotions experienced during triggering events etc. 
Nevertheless, they ended up with interesting and productive results, and, in my opinion, this goal was achieved due to the illustrative information received from the mixed methods of research.

Second Week, Reflections

Theory

This week we studied the theory on the subject of... theories. It was quite interesting to analyze what is theory and give it a proper definition. Doing this, we used the article "What Theory is Not" (Sutton, Staw), which reminded me of another work of this format, "The nature of explanation" (K. Craik) that has been written in 1943. Surprisingly for me, there were the same ideas in the both articles, that leads to the conclusion that this subject is still could be discussed, 60 years later.

The most important point for me was to remember that any science paper with references and diagrams, hypothesis and various data is not theoretical if there is no hypothesis that can be tested - it is an easy scheme to use while looking for the information for my master thesis and other work. 

Also, theory is an important philosophical term, used since times of Plato and Aristotle. It is a human tool used in order to understand and systematize our knowledge about the world. It doesn't exist by itself, as we pointed out during our group discussion.

Five types of theories can help in describing some scientific papers due to providing structured templates of parameters for every kind of theory to include. At the same time, sometimes it is impossible to choose the only one theory, or discuss its types at all, as we learned during the seminar. Personally, I consider Gregor's work as a good mind exercise. 

Practice

We discussed various theories in order to find the paper with actual theoretical concept, and have learned (and googled) a lot of theories in the end, such as Social capital theory, Game theory, Social Cognitive theory etc. It was interesting to learn how the hypothesis development works, to see the similarities in the structure of every theory, and try to think about each theory in the case of particular research, and then globally.

The editing work can also be considered as very useful. We had a difficult task: to edit a description, which was already complete. These skills sometimes can be very useful, while working on a voluminous text.

Theme 2

1) 
What is theory? 

Theory IS providing explanations with clear argumentation that can be tested. 
Theory IS abstract and general text, which answer the question Why? and provide links between ideas, events, structures or things. 
Theory’s aims are to describe, explain and predict the future developments based on revealing of the current connections between the cause and the event. 
Theory IS NOT subjective opinions, variables, diagrams, listings of references, data, hypotheses – these are not a theory, but it could be used as the kind of reasoning to support the theory. 


2)
The research paper I chose is 'Online Communities: Design, Theory, and Practice' from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (IF 2.172). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/preece.html 

In my opinion, this paper is using theory in an excellent way, and it can be characterized as the first type of theory according Table 2 in Gregor's article: theory of Analysis.

The paper consist of the theory which provides a descriptions of the phenomena of Online Communities, used during the last decades by various researchers, so answers the question ‘what it is’.
There are also the descriptions of various current research trends, used in the field (such as Ethnography, Content and linguistic analysis, Social network analysis, History flow technique, interviews and questionnaires), with the mention that no particular theory or set of theories currently dominates research on online communities: ‘In order to study online communities, researchers have had to adapt methodologies for use online'. 

The theory does not extend beyond analysis and description, but only analyses the relationships among these research trends. There are no predictions for the future, and causal relationships among phenomena are not specified. 

Theory Component: Instantiation, defining the concept of community 
Means of representation: Words 
Primary constructs: approaches, methodologies and techniques 
Statements of relationship: 'There is the relationship between community involvement and the use of the Internet to support the community'. 
Scope: Methodologies that have been proposed in the scholarly literature. A procedure for including new methodologies as they arise is proposed, 'as new and novel practices emerge within the online community environments'. 

3) 
As to the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory, it is obvious that theory of Analysis is based on the previous research and does not demand for any hypotheses, propositions or prescriptive statements, which makes it clean and indisputable. On the other hand, there is no new knowledge or even causal explanations: it is basically a listing, which should be already familiar for specialists.