Theme 2 - Reflections

This blog post will reflect on the topic of Theory in science and also what I have learned about Theory after discussing it further.

This week I couldn't come to the seminar due to another course, but after discussing the topic further with my friends I got some new insights. Often we use the word theory in common communication, one example could be when we tell our friends that we have a theory about something. Most of the times these "theories" is not actual theories, but instead they are hypothesis. The big difference is that a hypothesis does not have to be based on facts or other theories and does not have to be confirmed as valid by others.

When talking to my friends they told me about Copernicus and his hypothesis. This discussion was about when does theory become "Theory"? In the Copernicus case they came to an understanding that even though Copernicus had data backing up his hypothesis that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the common thought of the sun revolving around our earth, his hypothesis did not become a theory because the society (read church) did not accept his idea. However there seems to be no good answer to how many people that has to confirm ones findings for it to become a theory.

Since I missed this seminar I feel that I have a lot of unanswered questions, but I think I have gotten a better grip around the idea about what theory is and what it's not.

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.

Theme 1: reflection

The first week have been really hectic since I am attending two other courses as well and the 70 or so pages we had to read and reflect over took a lot of time. I would say that the time for reading the text was to short for me to actually be able to digest and produce something good out of it since I am not used to read philosophical texts in English. But everything wasn't bad about the first week, I did actually learn about something I found very useful and relevant for my education. This was how to select a research journal/research paper, what the term impact factor means and some new sites where I can look for good papers or other studies.

Short description of Impact factor from Wikipedia:
The term Impact factor (IF) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal. In a given year, the impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years. To calculate the 2011 impact factor of a journal you can use the following method:

A = the number of times articles published in 2009 and 2010 were cited by indexed journals during 2011.
B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2009 and 2010. ("Citable items" are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or notes; not editorials or letters to the editor.)
2011 impact factor = A/B.

I think the impact factor can be a good thing to use, however I see some problems with it as well.
It does only measure the overall quality of the journal, not the articles by themselves. Also it takes 2 years before you get any facts regarding the journal if it is of good quality. This is a problem when studying Media Technology since many of its subjects is changing at a very fast phase. The same problem can be found when looking on articles at for example Google Scholar, a paper with a lot of citations can be old and outdated and therefore it doesn't always work as a good indicator if it’s good or bad.

My feelings towards the book The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russel is kind of mixed, sometimes I “zoned out” when reading it since I didn't find it interesting enough but on the other hand I found it interesting at times when Russel would describe different examples which was easy to follow and understand.

Theme 1: Research publications/Theory of science

Select a research journal that you believe is relevant for media technology research. The journal should be of high quality, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above. Write a short description of the journal and what kind of research it publishes.

I chose Social Networks with an impact factor of 2,931. It is an interdisciplinary and international quarterly. It provides a common forum for representatives of anthropology, sociology, history, social psychology, political science, human geography, biology, economics, communications science and other disciplines who share an interest in the study of the empirical structure of social relations and associations that may be expressed in network form.


Select a research paper that is of high quality and relevant for media technology research. The paper should have been published in a high quality journal, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above. Write a short summary of the paper and provide a critical examination of, for example, its aims, theoretical framing, research method, findings, analysis or implications. You can use some of the questions in Performing research article critiques as support for your critical examination.

The paper I selected is Geography of Twitter networks. The paper examines the influence of geographic distance, national boundaries, language, and frequency of air travel on the formation of social ties on Twitter, a popular micro-blogging website. Based on a large sample of publicly available Twitter data, their study shows that a substantial share of ties lies within the same metropolitan region, and that between regional clusters, distance, national borders and language differences all predict Twitter ties. They found that the frequency of airline flights between the two parties is the best predictor of Twitter ties. This highlights the importance of looking at pre-existing ties between places and people.


Bertrand Russell


1. What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

In the book The Problems of Philosophy (1912) Bertand Russell coined the term “sense-data”. Russell explains this term with a few examples. One of them is with a table. A table can look rectangular to one observer, and a different shape to another. But it can also be brown at some particular angles and white from others. All of these different perceptions regarding color and shapes are sense-data in contrast to the material table, which presumably has only one color and one shape. Therefore sense-data are only mental images that we receive form a given object in the physical world. The term was introduced as an intention only to denote that which we are directly aware of in perception.


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?

The meaning of the term ‘propostion’ is that it is an obvious fact but one that still is of the abstract kind. A good example is: We know that the candidate who gets the most votes will be elected (Exept from the election between George W. Bush and Al Gore) :-P. Or that ‘two and two are four’. This is things we know without any actual sensual experience.

The statement of fact is also best described with an example: If "All men are mortal", then "Some men are mortal". That is the relationship between 'all' and 'some'. And if "All men are mortal", and "Socrates is a man", then "Socrates is mortal". These are three statements of fact, if it is a fact that all men are mortal and that Socrates is indeed a man.

A statement/proposition is therefore a verbal expression that is either true or false.


3. In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

The notion “definite description” Russell described as that all statements containing definite descriptions (of the form ‘so-and-so’) can be reformulated without definite descriptions while maintaining meaningful. As an example ‘a man’ is an ambiguous description, and ‘the man with the iron mask’ is a definite description.


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?

Russells main points are:

The greater part of what would commonly pass as knowledge is more or less probable opinions. Russells explains it like this: if we firmly believe something and it’s true, it’s called knowledge. If it’s false it’s called error, and if it’s neither nor of them, it’s called probable opinion.

Russells also points out that philosophical knowledge does not differ essentially from scientific knowledge. The only thing that sets them apart is criticism. `Philosophy examines critically the principles employed in science and in daily life; it searches out any inconsistencies there may be in these principles, and it only accepts them when, as the result of a critical inquiry, no reason for rejecting them has appeared.´

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This is my blog for DM2572 - Theory and Method for Media Technology