e=mc² | Theme 2: Theory

     

This week’s theme is “Theory” and in this post I will explain how I understood it from the suggested article readings and also a brief analysis considering the strength of the use theories models in a research paper of my choice. 

In my opinion the easiest way to understand “theory” was thinking of remarkable ones from previous studies. In my case I ended up relating it to some mass communication theories that I learned while doing my bachelor’s in social communication. 

Although I must confess that the first one that pop up in my mind was Einstein theory of relativity. I am far away from understanding Einstein but for some reason it popped up. 




From the article What is Not Theory I could came up with this brief explanation:

A theory need to be based in true statements about a specific theme. It is a blend of findings and logical reasoning to justify hypotheses but not a discussion of current results, findings. References, data, variables, diagrams and hypothesis are used to prove that a theory is true. Although isolated they cannot be presented as a theory. Good theory is about the connections.

After reading the article I was surprised by how hard it is to actually produce a consistent and coherent theory. In fact, as said in the article, what we usually read in the papers and journals are not really theories, they seem to be more of results of researches, that don’t really present a new finding. I realized that when following the task of the week to look for a paper that would present a good theory. Maybe in the scientific area this might be easier, or maybe I was too attached to the article concept. 

I was also very confused if there are different types of papers, with different objectives. Because to me the more logical for a paper that  presents a theory would be to first present a proposition, like something the author of the paper believe to be true instead of questions or hypothesis which was the most common patter I saw. Then with references, data, variables, diagrams and hypothesis prove if the theory really works.  

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. I had to really try to look for a new concept that could have been proven to be true somehow. I ended up finding the concept of digital natives, and a very interesting paper about it, but unfortunately I did not find the journal’s impact factor what made me doubt its reliability. 

Then my choice was the paper Ad Lib: When customers create the ad published in 2008 by the journal California Management Review (impact factor of 2.014) and has been cited 24 times.

From what I could identify from the article The nature of Theory  the paper is based on the IV model: explanation and prediction. The reason is because it presents what is the concept of Ad Lib, how, when, where and also why it happens. The arguments for answering the questions they attempt to solve are based on case studies that is a characteristic of causal explanations, also contained in the IV model. Moreover the authors present some advices deal with this situation that has appeared and that by their arguments will increase over the years. Stating what it will be is also a IV model attribute. 

One weak point though is that the research method they have chosen to use (case analysis) might not be statistically taken in consideration and the theory for explaining and predicting uses statistical and qualitative data to test the propositions. In my opinion looking to the interrelationships among the Theory types (figure 1) the analysis one is a base to any other. The explanation and prediction is a sum of both if seen as separated. In my opinion the authors used the most complete model.


Some concepts to keep in mind: 
1 References are not theory because no logic is presented to explain the reasons that led to the author’s predictions.

2 Empirical evidence plays an important role in confirming, revising or discrediting existing theory and guiding the development of new theory. Provide useful support for a theory.
   
   Data describe which empirical patterns were observed. Theory explains why empirical patterns were observed or expected to be observed.

3 Lists of variables must be explained by the theory showing why they are connected.

4 Diagrams can be a useful support in building theory, making it more understandable.

5 Hypotheses serve as fundamental bridges between data and theory. Hypotheses are what is expected to occur not why.


Later it will be time to check if all the assumptions made here were in the right direction.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." 

Albert Einstein

So far so good... | Reflections - Theme 1

"... if you take the red pill you stay in wonderland and I´ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes..." 

Morpheus - Matrix

Seminar – Journal, article, impact factor
The first moment of the course this week was a Seminar to discuss the journal and the article we have previous chosen and discuss it in small groups. In the same Seminar we were also asked to choose the journal and the article we thought were the most interesting ones. 
I liked the structure of the seminar because it made me realize that I understand the concept of impact factor (if) and that it takes time to find and interesting and high quality article. Also that the field of Media Management is based on constant changes and take some time for articles to get a high (if), which means that it might be difficult sometimes to evaluate an article based only on its (if).

Lecture – Theory of Knowledge
The second moment of the course was a Lecture about Theory of Knowledge, based mainly on the book “The Problems of Philosophy” from Bertrand Russell. During the lecture some concepts from the book started making sense. I believe that my main learning was of how we, as master students about to write a thesis, need to be conscious of how our work after published can or not end up influencing others. Moreover the lecture also made me think of the roles a student can choose as a learner and/or as a knowledge producer.

Seminar – Theory of Knowledge
The third moment of the course was a seminar about Theory of Knowledge in which we were divided in small groups to discuss the concepts of Russell’s book written in the previous blog post. 

It was very good to better understand the concepts and to check if the interpretation I did was the same as the others. Having the wrap up discussion with the whole class, after discussing it in small groups, was very nice as well because it complemented the concepts.

An interesting discussion emerged while discussing proposition and statement of fact:  the concept and the different types of verbal expressions. The discussion of the perception of the world being flat or not was also interesting. It clarified to me that propositions and statement of fact are synonyms and that both means that any proposition can be taken into consideration and experimented, and by its results be taken as truth.


To close the posts from Theme 1 a worth watching video of Matrix in which Morpheus questions Neo about his feelings, his beliefs, his perception of the world, knowledge and truth. And just like Neo, choosing to follow Alice steps seems the most reasonable thing to do, don’t you think?

The white rabbit | Theme 1: Research publications/Theory of science

1st step: Follow the white rabbit to find Wonderland...

In the first Lecture of the course the proper way in finding high quality journals and articles was approached, specially referring to the use of the Web of Knowledge and Google Academic tool.

The “impact factor” (IF) of a publication – a way to measure the quality of a publication by the average number of citations it has – was also explained and suggested to be evaluated in the searches performed on a research.

The first task of the theme 1 was to select both a research journal and a research paper for media technology with impact factor 1.0 or above. 

The journal I chose was the “Social Science Computer Review”, which has an IF of 1.075 (link). The journal is interdisciplinary and covers mainly research applications of computing, as well as the impacts of information technology in society. 

The article I selected was “The Impacts of Emoticons on Message Interpretation in Computer-Mediated Communication” and it was cited 49 times in the Web of Knowledge, which characterizes it as high quality. Considering the content the main question is to determine the effects of three common emoticons on message interpretations and 7 hypothesis were draw in the experiment. The main concepts are well structured as well as the relationship between them. The background information is logical, relevant and it is possible to see the progression of ideas. The only problem was that the work was published in 2001, and focusing on the use of emails, which nowadays in my opinion are not a media in which emoticons are mostly used. It would be interesting to check if the results would be the same in different channels as well. The research method used was an experiment to assess affective and attitude interpretations of emoticons. The data presentation was comprehensive and the results discussion very rich. While rreading the description of the research it occurred to me some of the same implications the author describes, like the impact of not having someone from the personal network sending the message and also the familiarity of the responder with the use of emoticons. Besides the discussion aspects, I think the author should also have written a conclusion of the study. 

The second task of the theme 1 was to read the book “The Problems of Philosophy” from Bertrand Russell and reflect on some concepts that the author presents.

In my opinion the book reading was intense not only because it questions the reader about so many different aspects of the same thing but also makes you confront your own beliefs when exposing strong and eloquent arguments.
During some passages the book reminded me a lot of two movies, The Truman Show and Matrix, especially considering the existence of matter “There is no logical impossibility in the supposition that the whole of life is a dream, in which we ourselves create all the objects that come before us.” 

Concepts to keep in mind: 
1. sense-data: the things that are immediately known in sensation such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardness, roughnesses and so on. Related to physical objects.

Why is this notion is important? Lead us to adopt the natural view, that there really are objects other than ourselves and our sense-data which have an existence not dependent on perceiving them.

sensation: the experience of being immediately aware of this things. 

2. proposition: it is a statement for consideration, based in logic. 
   - a priori: two and two are four; 
   - a priori (ethics) may also be elicited by experience: happiness is more desirable than misery; 
   - empirical generalizations: all men are mortal; Socrates is a man;  therefore Socrates is mortal.
   statement of fact: based in experiences; can be verified by experiments.

Propositions and statement of facts are based on the truth. Other verbal kinds of expression are based in each person's perception of reality and it can be true or false.

3. definite description: unique, nothing else has. “The so-and-so”, the nature of our knowledge concerning objects in cases where we know that there is an object answering  to a definite description though we are not acquainted with any such object. 

4. theory of knowledge (epistemology):
How can we know what is true and what is false? There can be no doubt that some of our beliefs are erroneous. 
One cannot be totally skeptical, otherwise no logical argument can be advanced. Example of religion, you need to have a start point of beliefs.