Theme 4. Quantitative research

Quantitative paper: The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students Use of Online Social Network Sites, Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, Cliff Lampe, 23 AUG 2007

I chose a paper about a Facebook intensity and social capital. 286 undergraduate students participated in an online survey. The survey consisted of different parts, one part were their social capital were investigated and another part consisting of questions about their Facebook habits. These could later be matched to prove their hypotheses.

I think that they used their data well but the way they chose their data made it hard for them to get to any significant conclusions. Their goal was to find a link between Facebook usage and social capital. In my opinion you need to send the survey to a large group of Facebook users but also to a large group of non users. Then you can analyse the differences between the two groups to see if there is a bond between Facebook usage and social capital. 268 of the participating students were Facebook users and only 18 were non users. Instead they had to explore the relation between social capital and the intensity of Facebook usage. The authors did have some good questions in there survey about how people used Facebook. I think that without these questions the results would be meaningless because people use Facebook in so many different ways.

That they only send the survey to a small group of people makes it impossible to generalize the conclusions but on the other hand it is fair to say that it fits very well with the University of Michigan where the undergraduates studied.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?
It is a simple way of gathering large amounts of data for analysis. Statistic conclusions can be drawn but sometimes it can be difficult to understand the result. If it is a survey you need to make sure that the questions are interpreted the correct way, otherwise the result could be incorrect. It can be used to test all sorts of things, not only human behavior.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?
With these methods it is much easier to understand where, when, why and how the results occurred. The method is more flexible and it makes it easier to obtain data that you might have missed out during a quantitative research but since the questions and answers are more open in a qualitative method it is harder to analyse and to make conclusions.

Reflection Theme 3

This week I have explored a journal and read a research paper. During the week we also had two seminars, during the first we discussed the journals that we picked and the papers that we read and during the second we discussed the theory in our paper and what theory is.

Before this week I had a very different view of what theory was. Now I have understood that it is not a guess or a thought but more of  a serious scientific proof of a phenomenon. One year ago when I started to think about my bachelor thesis I did not understand what the term theory really meant and that created some confusion when I started writing.

It really helped me understand what a good theory was when criticized the theories in the papers. Most of the criticism was about how the data was collected and analysed. Most of the tests were done with people involved and the group of people were not always representative for the rest of the population. Theories can also be based on other theories, this was something my group talked about at the second seminar. We chose social capital as our theory to present to the group and found out that it is really hard to test that the theory is solid and also to use it. How do you define social capital? Well if you have a thousand friends it does not matter much if they are all having a very low human capital. Human capital is another theory and we thought that social capital was dependent on human capital.

Theme 3. Research and Theory

"Computers & Education" is a technically-based journal about how computing can be used in education. The papers concern cognition and educational training with a scope that covers any kind of learning that is linked to technology. The journal has an impact factor of 2.775 and a 5-Year impact factor of 3.305.

 From humor recognition to irony detection: The figurative language of social media Journal: Data & Knowledge Engineering Impact factor 1.519
The paper is about how irony and humor can be detected and processed automatically. It clearly describes what humor and irony are and how it would be possible for a computer to recognize them. They come up with four different ways a computer can compare different text with each other. It is through the patterns: polarity, unexpectedness, emotional scenarios and ambiguity. They describe what they mean by this and create formulas that they later test.

The test is made with Twitter texts and hash tags. Then the computer compares the texts with different tags. E.g. the #humor-text is compared with #politics-, #irony-, #technology-texts. It compares 50 000 texts and after each comparison the computer learns. The computer uses different methods by combining the patterns: polarity, unexpectedness, emotional scenarios and ambiguity when it compares which leads to different results. You could criticize their data usage, because only because something is tagged as #Humor it does not mean that it is humor.

1. What the term theory really means is crystal clear to any scientist but for a normal person it can be difficult to understand. Very often the term theory is used incorrectly and confused with other terms. A scientific theory is highly regarded scientific knowledge and not a guess. A theory contains evidence, data, hypotheses etc. and they are all connected through logic and reasoning. A scientific theory can also be tested. If a theory is no longer valid because of new data, bad evidence, incorrect logic or something else the theory can be remade.
   
2. Design and action what best describes the theory of the paper "From humor recognition to irony detection: The figurative language of social media". The authors first takes up the issues of the problem and forms a solution. Then they create a computer system that compares Twitter texts. It consists of computation tools that learn how to determine what kind of text it is with help of their own created language models (patterns). I think it fits best with the design and action theory because it describes to the reader how to create this kind of system.
   
3. I think that the paper lacked explanation of the results. The theory is only telling you what you need and how to build the system to reach certain results. It is difficult to further develop the system since there is no description of why the results were like they were. It is any how compensated with a detailed description of what theories the system is based upon.  

Reflection Theme 2

This weeks reading and learning was about enlightenment, myth and mass production. A strange combination of topics was my first reaction. After reading the chapters and attending the seminar it became clearer of how they were connected.

I have always seen myths as lies before this week. This is not really what they are. They were something that people believed  in and lived their lives according to. They did not feel the need to prove things as we do today. If the world looked flat, it was flat. Suddenly though, people began to question the myths and that is when the enlightenment was born. Reason and scientific methods were required to be sure of anything and became their own masters. Instead of letting god guide you, you could guide yourself thanks to the enlightenment and become a strong individual.

The other part was about the mass production and its consequences. Mass production is something that I have been living my entire life with and I have never thought about what impact it has on society. It is true that we are all under the control of the large companies and that they can steer us where ever they want. But the enlightenment made us into individuals? I think that we think that we are individuals but it is impossible with all the mass media and mass production. During the seminar we spoke a lot about this but we could not really put our finger on what made us individual. What ever I do, at least another ten thousand people will do the same thing only because we are so many people on this planet. I think that being an individual means that you make your own choices. Not based on what anyone else tells you or expects you to do. This however is very difficult with all the mass media around us. Movies, music and TV makes as passive and absorbing is the authors opinion and I agree. Today interactive media forms has appeared that makes the audience think and reflect over the input. But websites does not have any obligations of telling the truth. Anyway I think that internet and other new media formats has given the people a greater chance of being individuals.

Theme 2: Critical media studies

1. A long time ago almost every man and woman believed in myths, religion and other fantasies. To see the world as it really was they needed enlightenment. It was a set of mind created through the gain of new knowledge. Because with new knowledge it was possible to break the myths through reasoning and logical deductions. This lead to a new era where science out conquered the religion.
2. Before the enlightenment myth were what people would call the truth. They believed in myths just as we believe in science today. The difference between myth and science is that a myth does not have any proof. It is just an attempt to describe the truth about something without any logic or reason to support its value.
3. Examples of old medias are paintings and phones and examples new medias are radio and TV. It seems like the main difference according to the authors is the way they can be consumed. Radio and TV can be reached by millions of people at the same time whereas the phone call can only be done by two persons at the time. This lead to that the new media gets more powerful and has a greater influence on society because everyone who uses is passive.
4. The culture industry is simply the culture being industrialized. The society is at the same time starting to get capitalized a good way of making money is to sell a lot. Production at a lower cost implies standardization. People become more and more passive. Before you could go to the painter and ask him to make a painting for you but now you can only accept what the industries gives to you. This lets them control society and make more money. Because they do not care about you, they care about your money.
5. A lot is already mentioned in the answer above but it is that the greater the media gets the less influence do the consumers get. This means that the media can control the audience and affect their minds regarding how you should live your life.
6. I think that it was a valuable insight to understand what enlightenment and myth really was and also how you still find it a valuable knowledge. Because how we look at science is just how they looked at myths a long time ago. Maybe after a thousand years everything we know as the "truth" has become myths.
   
   Also that the media has such a great influence on us. Especially young people fall victims of what the media is trying to convince us about. It is almost religious like how the media is controlling the society. Before people met at churches to get the news and to share their stories and the church could take advantage of that and fool people to obey them and live a life that benefited them. Now large companies has the power and through media they manipulate us and make us live their way, just so that they can become a little richer.  

Reflection, Theme 1

To prepare for this week I read "The Problems of Philosophy" by Bernard Russel analyzed it and answered some questions in my blog.

This was my first meeting with philosophy. I have always thought that it was nothing for me because I have always been a man of science but this week I have learned that they are not that far apart after all. After reading the text I have been starting to look at things differently. Before I liked to think that most of the things I read and hear is "the truth about it". But now I am not even sure what the truth is except that it is very complex statement. I have not gone so far that I start to question if the table exists or not but my sense data is not always to be trusted and even less is knowledge by description. I think that I sometimes is too confident in myself and always believes that my version of everything is closest to the truth. Also I have earned a better understanding of what science is and why I have to take this course. Because science has, in my mind, always been something very simple but it is not when you really start to think about it.

I wrote about how we cannot be certain of that things we read or hear is the truth in my previous blog post. A funny example is how everyone read the exact same text and came up with very different answers. The text is the same for everyone but still the interpreting it so diverse. The diversity of the reflections are even greater. People seem to have gained completely different experiences from reading the same text. This must mean that the world as we see it is our own and unique world and no one else sees it exactly the same. Somewhere in the text I read that we cannot understand each other but we can have a clue of what others are thinking.

Especially today when we consume huge amounts of media everyday, we should not accept everything as the truth. An article in a newspaper exists to attract readers or send out a message, not to spread the truth about anything. That is what probably what we will learn in this course, how to get as close to the truth as possible and be critical towards information and how to collect and analyse data in a scientific way. This will be well at hand when we write our master theses.

Theme 1: Theory of science

1. What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?
   How we see the things around us is not necessarily the truth about how they really are. If different people look at the same item they will perceive it differently. This is because our sense-data is different. Sense-data is how we use our senses to scan the world around us. We can use our sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste to get an understanding about an object. The sense data is not to be confused with the truth about the object. I.e the color of the object might be hard to distinguish if the surface is shiny and therefor the perception might be false.
   
   
   
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?
   There are different ways of learning, one is by acquaintance and another is by description. When we describe something we use propositions or statement of facts. They explain the object with different degree of truth. The statement of fact is verified to be true whereas a proposition is a statement based on beliefs. The proposition is built up by an object and its properties. I.e. in the proposition: the apple is red and juicy. "The apple" is the object and "red and juicy is its properties.
   
   
   
3. In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?
   Knowledge by acquaintance is knowledge that we get from ourselves by our sense-data or from our minds. Knowledge by description is what we get from others. Russell talks about two kinds of knowledge by description. One is the ambiguous description of the form: a so and so. The other is the definite form: the so and so. Simply put a definite description is a phrase of the form the so and so.
   
   
   
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?
   Russell begins to question what is true and what is false and do we ever know anything? What is knowing, is it that our beliefs are true? What if our beliefs are false and by coincidence and luck the appear to be true anyway is one weakness of stating that true beliefs are knowledge. Not even by deducting premises can we be sure that our beliefs are true because we do not know if the premises are true.
   
   According to Russell there is two ways of knowing a fact is by acquaintance or description (perception and by propositions) . These are also criticized. If someone reads something they think that they have gained new knowledge. The text might have been full of lies or it could have been interpreted in a misleading way by the reader and then the reader would have learned nothing.