Theory and Method for Media Technology

perjantai 28. lokakuuta 2016

All comments

Comments on theme 6

https://u12vkokq.blogspot.fi/2016/10/reflections-on-theme-6-qualitative-and.html?showComment=1477223861196#c203308137406791391

https://u1818rgq.blogspot.fi/2016/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study_17.html?showComment=1477225935743#c3357625775249452532

https://u1j8du7c.blogspot.fi/2016/10/theme-62.html?showComment=1477227410497#c220047547111672442

https://u1cq6h0z.blogspot.fi/2016/10/theme-6-reflection-on-qualitative-and.html?showComment=1477253537193#c3488987450624143295

https://u1kq1ay0.blogspot.se/2016/10/second-blog-post-theme-6-qualitative_70.html?showComment=1477328254980#c5968724698578167271

https://u1c051gg.blogspot.se/2016/10/62-qualitative-and-case-study-research.html?showComment=1477329531000#c3305590588767966701

https://u1mv5a16.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-6-second-blog-post.html?showComment=1477330374144#c6034471201525108213

https://pgd7117.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-6-reflection.html?showComment=1477332284293#c1864964332329549926

https://scarsickbg.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-6-blog-post-2-qualitative-and.html?showComment=1477333334681#c607210069329928363

https://u1gixy4z.blogspot.se/2016/10/after-theme-6-qualitative-and-case.html?showComment=1477334266459#c8190205601281504802

Comments on theme 5

https://u12vkokq.blogspot.se/2016/10/reflections-on-theme-5-design-research.html?showComment=1476709583713#c91388029556165816

https://u1818rgq.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-5-design-research-post-2.html?showComment=1476711517566#c7030913970800220680

https://u1j8du7c.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-52.html?showComment=1476713935378#c3765180653724282665

https://u1kq1ay0.blogspot.se/2016/10/second-blog-post-theme-6-qualitative_72.html?showComment=1476715790555#c7549556516666894742

https://u1c051gg.blogspot.se/2016/10/52-reflection-design-research.html?showComment=1476733806521#c9182140737585325459

https://u1mv5a16.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-5-second-blog-post.html?showComment=1476737744289#c798111272489420750

https://dm2572-16.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-52.html?showComment=1476738172770

https://u1h4muxc.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-52-reflection-empty.html?showComment=1476738734392

https://u17fpbu5.blogspot.se/2016/10/post-theme-5-design-research.html?showComment=1476739357608#c5120868083309150653

https://u1h02pv3.blogspot.se/2016/10/reflection-on-theme-5-design-research_9.html?showComment=1476740157116#c8999687707307777019

Comments on theme 1

https://u12vkokq.blogspot.se/2016/09/reflections-on-theme-1-theory-of.html?showComment=1474382621903#c8012768233548945985

https://u1818rgq.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-post-2.html?showComment=1474385563848#c8519093943359711431

https://u1j8du7c.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-1-post-2.html?showComment=1474393054181#c3919764515393269969

https://u1cq6h0z.blogspot.se/2016/09/reflection-on-theme-1theory-of.html?showComment=1474400526894#c2246818666965099173

https://u1kq1ay0.blogspot.se/2016/09/second-blog-post-theme-1-theory-of.html?showComment=1474401713497#c4524822284967868659

The course "Theory and Method of Media Technology" introduced us to the philosophy of science, starting way back from ancient philosophers and ending up with the famous thinkers of the 20th century as well as the various dimensions of modern science making. We learned not only to identify methodological problems in research and critically examine scientific theories but also analyze relationships between different scientific methods and approaches. Overall the course offered a unique opportunity to challenge one's thinking and reflect new information on the ideas of fellow students, which often resulted as mutually increased understanding.

The first theme dived into theory of knowledge and theory of science, introducing epistemological questions and challenging us to review concepts like human knowledge, objectivity, reasoning, perception or the existence of absolute truth, even. Although my previous experiences of philosophy were limited to a few high school courses, I soon became acquainted with the relationships between different concepts and had the pleasure of personally facing the limitations of my thinking. Luckily, I think it benefitted my understanding about the rhetoric writings of great minds in the history of mankind – their minds were limited by perception, too. At its most extreme, the purposive questioning of assumptions and their well-argued accuracy on the seminars led to frustration and confusion. However, as a result of reflecting Plato's Theaetetus I adopted the classical three-phased definition of knowledge: knowledge is perception, knowledge is true judgement and knowledge is true judgement with an account. These ideas primed my mind for Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, which broadened my understanding of knowledge with its transcendentally idealistic thoughts of a priori and a posteriori types of knowledge, among other things. An intriguing view related to the nature of knowledge is also offered by a philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his black swan theory, explaining the effects of unexpected events that have a major impact on their surroundings but which were thought to be impossible until they happen. Afterwards they are then rationalized and explained, often not very successfully. I think Taleb's theory is another excellent example of the limited human mind and ineptitude to predict things outside perception.

On top of the fundamental challenges of defining knowledge, the theme of critical media theory brought new dimensions to the subject in terms of cultural revolution and technical reproduction. Adorno and Horkheimer (1944) discussed the intellectual movement in the 18th century, enlightenment, which helped me to put the historical change from mythical beliefs to glorifying reason into a wider perspective. What justifies the operating logic of modern western societies of today is a result of development in thinking, as we discussed how enlightenment liberated people from the power of myths. Walter Benjamin's text continued the discussion by building bridges between advancement in thinking and technical improvement, leading to a cultural revolution and the era of mechanical reproduction. This was already significantly closer to what I felt myself more familiar with in the age of continually developing media technologies. Although, my previous focus on these issues had been more on the recent decades rather than centuries.

In addition to the discussion about mechanical reproduction, I have to relate technological determinism as an interesting point of view to the same subject. As a future media professional, I think it is highly desirable to reflect the problem of technological determinism: does the technological development determine the direction of society and mankind, or should it rather be seen as an opportunity of which the mankind is still in charge? I find the power struggle human versus technology still very intriguing and it's also relevant for media technology research. As we discussed on the course, media technology doesn't exist independent of its context – the systems become somewhat visible in the interaction between human and technologies. Further on, when relating media to this equation we have another interesting concept of media determinism. Having mentioned that, I can not dismiss the Canadian culture philosopher Marshall McLuhan, whose work on the field of media theory is often considered groundbreaking. McLuhan's famous aphorism "medium is the message" points out how the development of communication media forms our thinking and ways of communicating.

By building on top of the question of "What is knowledge?", it felt refreshing to review the definition of theory and also the purpose of scientific research in that context. After studying about the characteristics of a good theory and its importance when framing a subject, it became even brighter to me how theory is also justification for empirical research and experiments. Theory in its many senses is often an honest attempt to prove causalities and make generalizations, tracing the process of combining pieces of information and aiming at providing new knowledge. As for the methodological issues in scientific research, we took a closer look to scientific methods covering both the more traditional ones as well as the approaches that I was a bit less familiar with, such as design research and case studies in the context of media technology research. I found it extremely rewarding listening the experiences of researchers from KTH, presenting their own studies and generously answering our questions. The discussion was even fruitful for both sides, I hope.

After spending several hours in the search of objectivity and resulting in a complicated process of perceiving and filtering observations, I got used to having on what I call "healthy suspicious glasses" when analyzing issues that are presented as facts to us. I think this course succeeded in provoking useful doubts towards not only the scientific publications and papers but also the society of which the mass media has great responsibility. When entering the world of constant availability and information flow, whether as an individual or in a professional position, we are surrounded by false information, possible organizational reputation risks, click bait headlines, viral campaigns and other stimulus – all competing of our attention and forming our view without us even being aware of it. I believe the most important giveaway of this course was to feed the critical ground of our thinking as future researchers or media professionals – ability to question, criticize and analyze together with admitting our limitations and failure in the attempts of describing the world as it is.

maanantai 24. lokakuuta 2016

Theme 6: Comments

maanantai 17. lokakuuta 2016

Theme 6: Reflection

Theme 6 discussed the dimensions of both qualitative and case study research. These are my reflections based on the lecture, seminar and reading. Read my previous blog post on this theme here.

First of all, despite the familiarity of the concept of qualitative research, I felt it interestingly refreshing to process probably the most well-known scientific method (at least for me) as the last one in this course. Perhaps because of the order of themes discussed, even qualitative research gained new dimensions in my thinking. As a summary, qualitative methods are a good choice when descriptively explaining a phenomena in detail and in depth. Also, in contrast to quantitative research, qualitative is also more flexible – it actually allows the researcher to revise the study when new findings occur. This is a feature that is shares with design-driven research as well! As for the limitations, qualitative methods often are very time consuming, the possible influence of researchers in the process is higher (both when gathering the data and analyzing it) and the sample can be smaller and less statistically generalizable. It is therefore often benefitting to use mixed methods, of which I was happy to make a concrete observation in the article of my choice. Another thing that I gave more thought after this theme was the expenses – because of its time consuming and complex nature, qualitative research can be extremely expensive. Surely that can have an effect on the choice of a method, at least in some scientific communities.

As for the nature of case study, it is not so much a method but rather an approach which often combines both qualitative and quantitative methods. In the seminar we described the context of case studies by stating that it is conducted in a specific time and space or even across time and space. How a community copes after an earthquake or how an organization changes as a new management model is brought into use. We discussed that a case study doesn't have a hypothesis, but it does have a research question as a focus that is narrowed down in the process. Sometimes you don't have enough existing theory to formulate a decent research question, and those case studies are called theory building case studies. Another important feature is that data is overlapping with analysis during the entire process, and the process of conducting the study doesn't even have to be a chronological one.

I find it accurate when Ilias described case studies as a "metamethod", a sort of higher level of scientific research, that is not a method you can apply but a method relying on other methods. This definition is similar to the one I wrote in the second paragraph. Case studies also remind me of qualitative research as they too provide in-depth description of a phenomena, and as a matter of fact case study papers don't necessarily even state that they are case studies. This is something we discussed during the seminar as well, that the study presented by Hanna Hasselqvist on the lecture was actually a case study even though not stating it on the paper.

Ilias also mentioned that neurosciences is a good example of using case studies as an approach, because there are many interesting cases concerning the processes of human brain and the affect of brain damages on behavior, for example. But just as much the approach can be applied to any context on a micro or macro level. An interesting thought occurred to me as I started to further analyze the generalizability, which was brought up on the seminar as well. For me it seems that in the context of neuroscience, the aim is to often gain new knowledge of the matter and then try to generalize this to other similar cases and brain research. Understanding the process is still in the very core of it, but the desired outcome in a longer run can be to invent a new medicine, for example. In contrast to this idea of generalizability, we also discussed that the findings often are limited to the specific circumstances. Perhaps it could be identified that the generalizability of a case study also depends on the organism it examines: whether it is an organization, community or the complex human mind. Whatever the case (clever, huh?), a case study describes the cause and effect relationship of a specific phenomena and then provides seeds for further research.

Theme 5: Comments

These are my comments on theme 5:

1. https://u12vkokq.blogspot.se/2016/10/reflections-on-theme-5-design-research.html?showComment=1476709583713#c91388029556165816

2. https://u1818rgq.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-5-design-research-post-2.html?showComment=1476711517566#c7030913970800220680

3. https://u1j8du7c.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-52.html?showComment=1476713935378#c3765180653724282665

4. https://u1kq1ay0.blogspot.se/2016/10/second-blog-post-theme-6-qualitative_72.html?showComment=1476715790555#c7549556516666894742

5. https://u1c051gg.blogspot.se/2016/10/52-reflection-design-research.html?showComment=1476733806521#c9182140737585325459

6. https://u1mv5a16.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-5-second-blog-post.html?showComment=1476737744289#c798111272489420750

7. https://dm2572-16.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-52.html?showComment=1476738172770

8. https://u1h4muxc.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-52-reflection-empty.html?showComment=1476738734392

9. https://u17fpbu5.blogspot.se/2016/10/post-theme-5-design-research.html?showComment=1476739357608#c5120868083309150653

10. https://u1h02pv3.blogspot.se/2016/10/reflection-on-theme-5-design-research_9.html?showComment=1476740157116#c8999687707307777019

maanantai 10. lokakuuta 2016

Theme 5: Reflection

Theme 5 focused on design research and we had both a great lecture and a seminar in addition to the reading. This is my reflection on this theme.

To be honest, this theme was the one I was most unfamiliar with at the beginning. Since my background is in communication, psychology and economics (and little bit of digital media as well), I had very little knowledge of especially the tech domains in design driven research. However, that is also the reason why this theme felt even more relevant and important to dive in to.

In the beginning of the lecture we got a nice introduction to methods and empirical data in RtD. We are surrounded by design every day in all of its senses, whether it is the inner technological micro systems or surface design. In the center of RtD is the interactive system itself, but the focus is even more in the human aspects around it: interaction between humans and devices. Cognitive abilities, culture, emotions, physical bodies, social behavior and senses all provide a broad ground for research in several fields, all of which are equally needed when trying to gain a comprehensive understanding of the subject.

One particularly memorable detail was the rule of 4 D's in RtD: Discover (insight into the problem), Define (the area to focus upon), Develop (potential solutions) and finally Deliver (solutions that work). Another important message from the lecture was the thought that designing systems happens in the context of other systems, such as technical platforms and social systems. So 'design' as a term is so much more than the interface. The concept of design is so wide that each of the dimensions is an extensive area of study in itself. In addition to what I wrote above about the focus on interaction in RtD: then again, with a focus on technology, constructive activities are the core method of investigation.

During the seminar we discussed our discoveries about the subject in relation to our perceptions before the theme. Starting from designing the concept of 'empirical data' we discussed about Lundström's paper "Differentiated Driving Range" and what is the empirical data in that. In that case we reached a consensus of it being the driving range (quantitative data) and further on with the help of Lundström we concluded that empirical data doesn't necessarily have to be experiments, it could have just as easily been interviews or observations. Lundström encouraged us to think all the options it can be instead of settling with one definition. A good reminder was also to remember that collecting empirical data is not yet research, although people often may be confused about it. For example, governmental institutions often gather data and publish statistics, but they are not to be mixed up with scientific research.

As we moved on discussing about the replicability of design research, we had a few interesting thoughts about the effects of historical setting, tools, skills of the researchers etc. on the studies. I had previously maybe a little too black and white perception about research needing to be so objective, that anyone could reproduce it with the knowledge gained from the paper and end up with similar results. At some extent this does indeed apply, when we think one particular study or for example coding of data: the point of several researchers coding same data is to increase the objectivity. However, while we did agree that design driven research is replicable, we also stated that the results are dependent on the current context. By this I mean both the technical development and cultural and social aspects, which always have an impact on the context. Of course one could argue that the same tools can be used and the study can be conducted exactly the same way as the original study guides, but we also discussed the little things that are always left outside of the paper – no matter how carefully one tries to describe the process.

Theme 4: Comments

1. https://dm2572-16.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-42.html?showComment=1476109904328

2. https://omg-dm2572.blogspot.se/2016/10/after-theme-4.html showComment=1476112160484#c8705817781878205621

3. https://u1ci4ejx.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-4-review.html showComment=1476131876761#c2777317191776341822

4. https://u1eqtjc8.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1476134735551#c8431193030632598782

5. https://u11873yx.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-3-second-post.html?showComment=1476135743446#c8765666847017634489

6. https://u1bauz11.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1476136965344#c191466614569887413

7. https://u1h02pv3.blogspot.se/2016/09/reflection-on-theme-3-quantitative.html?showComment=1476137833573#c8344185536235713445

8. https://scarsickbg.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-4-blog-post-1-quantitative.html?showComment=1476138449654#c895421984201654116

9. https://u1c051gg.blogspot.se/2016/09/42-quantitative-research-reflection-310.html?showComment=1476139134454#c4315792381652307883