Comments theme 2

1. http://butlikewhyisit.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-reflection.html?showComment=1443434558789#c2141345591122300000

2. http://oscarlimback.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-after.html?showComment=1443436089134

3. http://ixxzw.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-after-seminar.html?showComment=1443436948062#c5326898504077649727

4. http://elindm2572.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-reflection.html?showComment=1443437672020#c1651042515858501023

5. http://ninopmedia.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-reflections-0-false-18-pt-18-pt.html?showComment=1443452272664#c2422735170069183630

Post Theme 3

I'm actually quite satisfied with my explanation of theory from my pre theme post, however I will make some small adjustments to it with some more clarification that was gained in this weeks seminar discussions.

Theory is not the same thing as a hypothesis. A hypothesis could just be a statement, and a good hypothesis is falsifiable through tests. A hypothesis can through tests supply you with data that you can analyse. A theory should include some kind of logical reasoning of why we believe or predict something, and be backed up by either an analysis of different previous theory or empirical data gained from tested hypotheses. Worth to note is something we also discussed in the seminar, that theory often precedes hypotheses. The latter could be seen as a tool to find holes in a theory, test its limitations or scope etc.

Something I want to put emphasis on in this post theme reflection is the fact that theory is not the same thing as a 100% proven fact. Some of the most famous theories out there like the gravitational theory are often wrongly seen as laws of nature by the average Joe. While it might be the best and widely accepted explanation of WHY e.g. a pen that you drop falls to the ground, a paradigm shift in the future might change our view of the world. While this might seem unlikely today, who knows if a new Copernicus comes along and turn everything upside down...

However, the definition of theory does vary between fields of study, and giving a general definition would be impossible. The definition I have given is what I would have given to a media technology student. A philosophy student would most likely not give empirical data much merit but rather focus on ideas as a foundation for logical reasoning.

I think I was very active during this weeks seminar giving my points of view in the small group discussions. However we did not really have that different opinions on what theory is so our discussions ended up being a lot of confirmation of our own ideas rather than let's call it dialectics (yea I had to bring in a buzzword).

The last thing we talked about was the five types of theories from Gregor's article. I know that none of the four first types are to be seen as better than the other, but I still can't fully let go of the idea that it's a tier list where an EP theory attempts to go deeper than an analysis theory.

Overall I think this theme was pretty interesting, mainly because my master thesis is coming up next semester and I see this as good exercise in both what to think about when gathering information and getting used to reading research papers. The paper I chose this week has nothing to do with what I want my thesis to be about, but rather a personal interest of mine. But why not mix business with pleasure every now and then.

Pre Theme 4

Professional Personae - How Organizational Identification Shapes Online Identity in the Workplace

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12103/

Christian Fieseler, Miriam Meckel, Giulia Ranzini (2014, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication)

In the article I have choosen for this week's theme the authors explore the connection between the perceived level of identification with the organisation where the subject works and overlap of personal and professional personae online in social media.

The data collected for this study consisted of an online survey that was sent to 17 000 individuals registered in a database supposed to consist of communication and marketing managers in Europe. Out of these 17 000 invitations, they managed to get 679 usable fully filled questionnaires to work with. The demographic consisted of 369 females and 310 males, with a mean age of roughly 41,5 years with a standard deviation of 9 years. The questions were all ranked on a 5 point Likert scale and analyzed on the group as a whole, but also in groups based on gender, age, position and wether or not the individual have a high or low concern about privacy in social media.

The authors state that one of the aims of the study is to explore possible connections that future studies can build on, and I believe the method used is a good one to create a foundation for more specific theories and hypotheses in the future. However, I do see a problem in the fact that all questions are based on the perception of the subjects. While I don't doubt that the questions were answered in a way the subject perceived as true, I see a risk in not trying including some question(s) designed to standardize the subjects view on the phenomena. However, the authors do state their research is exploratory and to be used as a foundation for future qualitative studies, which is why I believe the method is sound.

What I especially like about the study is that the authors are aware and do mention the limitations of their study. An example is that they mention what I tried to describe for the previous theme the possibility of self-selection bias in the sample, since they chose a group that often use social media as part of their job. Their analysis is however very interesting, especially the comparison between the different groups mentioned earlier, which can be used to perform studies on a more varied sample on specific findings in both a quantitative or qualitative way.

Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play

https://www.kth.se/social/files/56000bc9f2765448c25c5279/Drumming%20in%20Immersive%20Virtual%20Reality.pdf

Konstantina Kilteni, Ilias Bergstrom, and Mel Slater

I found this paper to be really interesting! Getting empirical data that points to the fact that our perceived identity can alter our ability to perform in a positive way if said identity is believed to mesh better with the context than our own. Maybe a better way to describe it would be that it's easier to use our innate abilities to their full potential if we don't feel out of place in the context. I can relate to this myself, and I know of several situations where I felt uncomfortable due to being over/under dressed or too old/young in a crowd and unconciously limited myself while interacting with other people.

It would however have been interesting to look expand the study to 4 groups: Casual/Formal Dark skinned and Casual/Formal Light skinned to further explore if the results can be explained with perceived cultural belonging or if dress code also play a significant role. However after discussing with Ilias the aim of the study was to create as large of a contrast as possible to see if differences exist. I hope someone continue the research and build on the theory.

What are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative/qualitative methods?

I would say the main benefit of using a quantitative method is to be able to test hypotheses on a large sample to test the scope of a theory and to find differences between groups within the sample that might hold significance for further studies. Assuming the subject to his or her best ability answer the questionnaire truthfully, there could be a comfort in the anonymity of a survey.

On the other side of the spectrum we have the qualitative methods. These are likely to be prefered when trying to explain why we get the result of a quantitative study. The benefit here is that you get to ask the follow up questions and maybe explain a result of a quantitative study that could have multiple explanations. Qualitative methods are however time consuming and require the researcher(s) to spend time with each subject. The risk here is that the chosen sample does not properly represent the userbase or population as a whole, but with good empirical data from the quantitative studies criterias for the sample should be good enough to lower this risk.

Both types of methods have their own merit, and I think both are nessecary in the process of creating and evolving theories, either in different phases of a study or between them.

Comments theme 1

1. http://thewind-egg.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-reflection-to-be-honest.html?showComment=1442687638768#c3341044101483736376

2. http://theoandmeth.blogspot.se/2015/09/reflection-of-theme-1.html?showComment=1442789910434#c328413724703233912

3. http://vadfinnsegentligen.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-reflection.html?showComment=1442790733154#c634498498909287942

4. http://paullinderoth.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_14.html?showComment=1442793738372

5. http://pargman420.blogspot.se/2015/09/post-seminar-reflection-1.html?showComment=1442836402291#c1980649597486574815

Self comment. I know it doesn't count but it's my way of doing a post-post reflection about judgements and synthetic a priori knowledge, similar to what I have commented on other blogs:
http://suchapriori.blogspot.se/2015/09/post-theme-1-reflection.html?showComment=1442832192730#c1605004579644500346

Post Theme 2

At first I percieved this theme as easier for me to work with compared to last week's. If that can be linked to the fact that the texts were lighter read than Kant or that I spent more time studying I don't know, probably a combination of the two. While I felt like I had a better grasp, there were still some things I did not fully understand, or missunderstood a bit. And most of all, it felt like my “understanding” only scratched the surface of the topics.

However like someone commented on my first reflection, I don't think we are supposed to know everything when we write our first post. I think I managed to get enough of an understanding to be able to follow the teachers reasoning during the lectures and the seminar.

What eluded me the most was a full understanding of nominalism, but the example given in our seminar group of the cave was a really good illustration that helped me a lot. Comparing it with Plato's view on realism that state something along the lines of “we only see reflections/shadows of the unique object (concept)” gave me in 2 minutes what reading multiple Wikipedia articles could not. Nominalism discard the idea of this abstract object that we can not see, and tell us that what we see is real. This is very linked to enlightenment since it tells us to go out into the world to observe it and perform experiments to understand it.

I also think the teacher managed to connect this very well with the question about revolutionary potential and the two texts different view on it. It's important to keep in mind the texts were written in different times and the fact that Benjamin never got to America to experience culture from another point of view like Adomo and Hokheimer did, but the comparison is still very interesting.

Adomo and Hokheimer believe culture, or more specifically mass media could potentially be a dangerous tool for mass deception. Having a nominalistic view of the world where we accept what we see as the truth is a road to where history repeats itself. The example given where secretaries depicted in movies subordinate to a male boss only leads to cementing current social structures. If you control media, you can control the people. Benjamin on the other hand do believe culture have revolutionary potential because now your average Joe can be depicted in media, which gives dignity to the working class when it's no longer reserved for royalty and other people of power. An example was also given from DDR where the people started to get a different view of what life could be like if they lived like their cousins in the west, and that this over time lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Overall I think the seminar this week was really interesting, discussing our different opinions and maybe getting some ideas shot down. Something I would have liked to discuss that was mentioned in the theme but not really covered much is Hegel's or Marx version of dialectics. I got a good explanation of the principle of how it works with the thesis and anti thesis forming a synthesis, but it would be interesting to discuss possible outcomes. However, this might not really be relevant for this class and I guess I will have to look at it in my spare time.

Pre Theme 3

I have selected a paper from “Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication”. The journal is an open access online journal with its first publication dating back to June 1995. The journal is interdisciplinary and publish papers focused on “social science research on communicating with computer-based media technologies”.

How to be a gamer! Exploring personal and social indicators of gamer identity

by Frederik De Grove, Cédric Courtois, Jan Van Looy

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12114/

The paper covers a study performed on 100 high school students who all play digital games in some form. The aim is to find personal and social factors that hold significance when identifying one self or others as gamers. The age group was selected because the authors conclude that “proportionally they represent the group of people who play the most digital games”. The method used in the study is an online survey followed up with two segments of face-to-face interviews where the student answer questions related to indicators such as age, play frequency, gender etc. The result is presented numerically with a mean value. The authors conclude that their study using indicators partly gathered from previous research could be the first to show the relative impact of said indicators and how important they are related to a gamer identity.

I believe the aim of the paper is a good one and very relevant to media technology since understanding the user is one of the important factors in creating something successful, and the gaming industry with games, hardware and social media is growing rapidly.

I do however have some objections to the choice of only focusing on high school students. The first of two reasons the authors give for choosing this group is that the statistics in their references state that “Incidence of gaming by age and gender” in average in Europe shows a peak in the youngest age group and a downward slope can be seen from there. The authors second reason for choosing the younger group is the difference between early and late adolecence that can be found within it. While I agree that this aspect is interesting, I believe the study could benefit a lot from including a group of older subjects to compare the importance of the indicators between age groups. Worth to note is that the average gamer of today is in his (yes statistically he is a male) early thirties, and 49% of all gamers in Europe covered in the study they reference is over 35 years old. With this in mind, the youngest group could in fact be an outlier that identifies more with the gamer identity, and after a certain age when the individual has matured the result could normalize. We don't get to know this from the paper but I instead got the impression that it gradually decrease over time.

While this paper could be a good reference for future studies to follow, I think it's dangerous to draw too many conclusions from the age group used alone, since it's not representative of the population as a whole.

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

I would say first and foremost theory is not the same as a hypothesis, which is something I know that many, including myself have gotten wrong many times. The latter is just a statement that is a proposed explanation of a problem that you can test with experiments. Theory is neither data that could be the result of the earlier mentioned experiment. But with your hypothesis that you test with experiments, you can get data that you analyze and can use as a foundation for logical reasoning. From that you can form a theory that could be a general explanation or prediction of a phenomenon.

The theory of a paper is not to be confused with referencing theories of other older papers since yours has to progress the knowledge of the field, or you would simply be redoing someone elses work.

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

I had a hard time identifying the papers theory, since most of the preface is citations of other researchers theories. I do however believe that the main theory of my selected paper can be formulated as: Social context and personal consumption of the medium are linked to self-cathegorized gamer identity.

The theory is in my opinion identified as predictive. The authors do predict that different indicators might hold different significance since they chose to present their data in in a way that could easilly be meassured with eachother. They do however not dig deeper into explaining these differences and because of this I believe prediction is the best fit.

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

The benefit of the papers theory is that it manages to apply theories from other fields to gamer identity that so far is a relatively unresearched area, and might be used for further research. Unfortunately, the lack of explanation to why the indicators have different significance is not covered in the study and left me feeling like something was missing.

Post Theme 1 reflection.

To be perfectly honest, I had a really hard time understanding Kant when I read the preface to Critique of Pure Reason. Being totally uninitiated in the field of philosophy combined with a heavy text proved challenging to say the least. I tried to form some sort of understanding but never got to the point where I felt like I actually knew what I was writing about.

Plato's text was actually relatively pleasant to read, even though it was a lot of text. It gave me an introduction and some understanding about dialectics, and I could see some value in the method by looking at something from different angles and not accepting your first answer that might fit the question as correct.

I did however start reading way too late and never gave myself the time to reflect, nor the chance to re-read the passages I didn't understand. This can be seen in my pre-theme reflection that I rightfully got some critique on. I agree with it, and now over a week later I'm really not satisfied with that performance.

The lecture brought me some clarity, and I started to understand the “school book version” of Kant and his trancendental idealism. However, while I noted during the whole lecture and tried to understand what was being said, I'm still not totally sure how I would analyze a substance myself using Kant's cathegories and forms of intuition.

During the seminar our small group spent a lot of time discussing how we understood the lecture of the theme, and we asked ourselves the question related to the lecture “If I look at a cup at a table, turn arround and look back. Is it the same cup?”, we agreed on yes, because that is how we perceive the world through our faculties of knowledge.

Unfortunately for everyone, we were the biggest seminar group during week 1, due to me being part of the problem by being a temp. This lead to only about half of the groups had time to raise their questions before the whole class. Never the less, some interesting discussions came up related to Kant's statements “Perception without conception is blind” and “Conception without perception is empty”.

To round this off I learned my lesson and started with my preparation for theme 2 earlier, and I hope that it can be seen in my pre-reflection. There are still things I don't understand in that regard, but I feel like I was better prepared this time arround.

Dialectic of enlightenment

Adomo and Horkheimer is already in the first scentence saying that the goal of enlightenment is to “liberate human beings from fear and installing them as masters”. As I understand it, enlightenment is to see things for what they truly are, without letting our view of it be tainted by preconceptions caused by e.g. myths. Myths have and still fill an important role for humanity. We feel powerless before a question we can not answer or truly understand. Giving the unknown an explanation, be it that thunder is caused by Thor riding his wagon or that the reason we are suffering in life is to test our character before the better after life. Accepting these myths brings us comfort, a false sense of controlling the unknown. I see an enlightened person as someone who with the help of reason can understand and explain nature as it is, without having to rely on myth.

Dialectic is an argumentation form where the participants are searching for the truth rather than convincing others that their point of view is correct like in debates and similar. One form of dialectic is demonstrated in Plato's text for theme 1, where Socrates and Teaeteus engage in an argument to find out if Theaeteus answer to the question “What is knowledge?” is true. They keep presenting their points of view to see under which conditions the theory might or might not work. In the end however, it ends up being falsified.

Nominalism as I understand it tells us that abstract man-made words, cathegories and concepts does not exist in reality, but only in language and thought. An example was brought up during the theme 1 lecture where the teacher said that according to Kant, the table has the attribute grey according to the way we percieve the world. Nominalism would say that “grey” is just an empty word , since it lacks a specific definition and can be understood in different ways. With this in mind, nominalism is a very important concept in the text since I think it connects to enlightenment by the fact that you want to stay away from abstraction or myths, and look at the world as it is.

“The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity”

According to Karl Marx, the substructure is the actual economy with the workers, equipment and production, while the superstructure can be seen as society in a larger scale, that defines how we view art, politics, laws and similar. He also say that the superstructure is much slower to adapt than the substructure, which I understand as it being hard to predict how a change in the economy will will impact society. With this in mind, I think it's valid to analyze cultural production through Marx's perspective since culture sets trends and ideal, be it political or the concept of beauty.

In my opinion Benjamin does believe that culture have revolutionary potential. He states that film will lack any real revolutionary merit as long as money controls the industry. He does however see the potential in film to show “revolutionary criticism of social conditions, even of the distribution of property”. A way to transport information to the public in an available format. Adomo and Horkheimer however have a more sceptical view on the matter where they believe that anyone stepping out of the circle of what I like to call “accepted culture” will fade away and never get a chance to make his or her message heard.

From my understanding of Benjamin, I agree that our sense perception is determined both naturally and historically. A naturally determined perception would be putting your hand on a hot stove. I percieve the stove as hot because warmer than my body temperature. Historically determined perception however is to me described very well by the quote “History is written by the victors”. Our view of the world is changed by a historical event. An extreme example of this would be Nazi Germany. While they advanced they found many followers all over Europe, including Sweden. I believe our perception of other humans would be vastly different today should Hitler have succeeded. At the same token, Germans of today knows as much as anyone else that what the nazis did was wrong, from our historically determined perception.

The aura of an art object is the uniqueness or authenticity of it. You can feel the aura of a painting in the strokes of the painter, how his result could have been affected by his mood while painting and similar. To reproduce the painting would  be to wither the aura by allowing multiple copies of the same work of art exist, which denies it its uniqueness. I understand Benjamin's description of aura for natural objects as the feeling you get when you behold it. Imagine standing at the base of Mt Everest, gazing at it's massive size and you feel like you are shrinking in relation. This is feeling the aura of a natural object.

Pre Theme 1

 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 argues in the preface of “Critique of Pure Reason” that “Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects.”. This means that when studying an object, we draw conclusions from what we see when examining it to progress our research and establish some property as a priori, an assumed fact that further research can build upon without having to repeat what has already been done. Kant has objections to this method, since not everything is what it seem, which is covered below.

From my understanding, Kant is telling us with “... assume that objects must conform to our cognition. “ that we instead should formulate a hypothesis and perform experiments to see if the object behaves as expected in conditions set by the us.

Kant takes Copernicus as an example to reinforce his point. Our perception of the world at the time was geocentric and Copernicus could not get his research to add up. But by questioning this accepted fact and continued his research with the hypothesis that the solar system is heliocentric, the pieces of the puzzle started to fall in place.

In my opinion, this matches pretty well with how I have learned to perform experiments in school. You don't do it expecting to find an absolute truth, you do it to test a hypothesis to see if the outcome is as expected to draw conclusions or just outright falsify it.

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"?

Socrates argues with Theaetetus regarding his claim that knowledge is perception, in my opinion mainly because while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, truth is not. By stating that your look through your eyes rather than with them, Socrates want to make a point that while two persons can look at the same object, they will register and associate it differently depending on their previous experiences.

This actually connects back to Kant and not letting our cognition conform to objects. The eye can be fooled like in the example with all our favorite black/blue dress.

The information will be subjective, and as examplified in the text a tall man might look short to one person, while the second person might feel cold while the first is sweating. To me it became obvious that Socrates arguments against empiricism when he brought out the argument that if if true knowledge is decided by sensory input, it would mean that more than one version of truth would exist.