Theme 2: Theory

Select a media technology research paper that you argue is using theory in an excellent way. The paper should have been published in a high quality journal, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above.
I have selected the paper Symmetry and aesthetics in website design; it’s a man’s business by Tuch, Bargas-Avila and Opwis (2010). The paper was featured in the journal Computers in Human Behavior with a Impact Factor of 2.293.


Your tasks are the following:
Briefly explain to a first year student what theory is, and what theory is not.

Theory differentiates to some degree because of philosophical and disciplinary orientations. But the most common type is explanation and prediction according to (Gregor, 2006) table 9. However Gregor points out that one type of theory is no more valuable than another therefore I will keep this short. I will quote Gregor “different perspectives on theory at a general level shows theories as abstract entities that aim to describe, explain, and enhance understanding of the world and, in some cases, to provide predictions of what will happen in the future and to give a basis for intervention and action.”
According to Sutton (1995) a theory requires empirical support to show why a process might be true. These methods could be a small set of interviews, a demonstration experiment or a pilot survey. This means that theory is not based on subjective opinions of a researcher.


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?

In the paper conducted by Tuch, Bargas-Avila and Opwis (2010) the theory is analytic (Table 2) since they use diagrams and tables to represent their research but it could also fall in under another category. Theory for Predicting could fit since they figured out how only men are sensitive to the studied symmetry effect which should be taken into consideration by future website designers. But not why this occurred. Also their data comes from a laboratory experiment with a large test group.


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

The big limitation about Theory of Predicting is that it doesn't explain why something happens. In Tuch et.al (2010) case this particular why might not be as interesting as their findings but it is still something that could help us understand the matter better.