Theme 3 – Reflection

I think this week’s assignment was a bit easier to absorb than the previous ones. I think one of the reasons for that is because this assignment left the philosophical area a bit and got more closer to subjects that I, as an engineer student, am more used to. It was also fun to pick one of the texts by myself because I could pick one that I found really interesting. Nevertheless it was hard to pick one that actually fit the purpose but I think I managed to choose a paper that was good enough to work with.

The paper I chose for this theme was about popularity on Facebook and what kind of impressions their profiles imply. When we discussed this text in the seminar we talked about popularity online and offline. We talked about how it may differ, a person who seems popular online does not necessarily have to be popular offline, or in the real world. We also talked about what popularity is and why some people are seen as popular and some are not.

When we discussed all the papers we have read we also talked about what theory is. I think I got a better understanding of what theory is both after the reading the text What theory is not and after the seminar. As I understand it, theory is a way of explaining why something happens or a way to describe what happens. And a theory can either be strong or weak.

Theme 4 – Quantitative research

I have chosen to read the quantitative paper The effectiveness of Short Message Service for communication with concerns of privacy protection and conflict avoidance which have been published in the journal Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications.

1.       Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
In the research paper they use a questionnaire survey as a method to collect data. The benefit of this method is that it is rather easy to get a huge amount of data in a short time. You basically just need to send out the form and then sit and wait for all the answers. A limitation could be that you can get answers from people that are not in your user group if they accidently get their hands on the survey. Another limitation could be that if the user group is small you get a wryly result because it cannot represent a whole group.

In the paper they used a kind of street survey where they stood on the street and asked questions to people passing by. In the paper they argue that this is a good way since you get a better circulation of the participants. They also used a gift in form of e.g. a pen, a calendar etc. for all the people that took part of the survey. I believe that this is both good and bad, it is good because it can draw more people to the survey and thereby they get more answers. But it can also make the answers less serious because some people might answer it just because they get a gift from doing so.

2.       What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
I think I learned that a survey isn’t just a form on the internet that you send to all the people you want to participate. You can collect all this data by standing on the street and ask people the same questions that would be in your form.

3.       Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?
I believe one of the problems could be that the people answering their survey got a gift for being a part of the study. As I said under question 1 I believe that this can contribute to the fact that some answers might not be good enough to have in a study. They might get participants that only want to be a part of this because of the gift and it can be hard to find those answers and to know how serious they are. I think they could have improved the methods if the also had used a qualitative method together with the quantitative. They could have followed up their survey with more personal interviews which could have got them a deeper analyze of the results.

1.       Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?
A benefit of using quantitative methods is that it is rather easy to summarize the collected data. You can easy put up graphs and tables of the data and compare the different answers from a question. It is also a good way to reach a lot of people in a short time. A limitation is that some factors cannot be presented numerically such as many social and political variables. It is also a limitation that the survey can be bias and a false representation because the researchers are the one setting the questions. It is also a limitation that some questions does not fit the participants to 100 percent. Therefore the answers are the ones that is most alike rather than an answer that is 100 percent alike what the participant really thinks.

2.       Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?
A benefit with qualitative methods is that it provides depth, it goes deeper than just analyzing numbers. It also is more open to responses that sometimes is outside the actual subject. A limitation is that it is more time consuming than quantitative methods which leads to fewer participants. This can make it more difficult to generalize and draw conclusions from the answers. 

Theme 2 – Reflection

The texts this week were easier to read and understand than those the first week which made the assignment a bit easier. I also think that the seminar was very interesting this week. Håkan, our seminar leader, was really good and I felt like I could follow all the reasoning even though I unfortunately missed his lecture due to illness.

During the seminar we talked a lot about nominalism and I got a clearer view of what nominalism really mean. We also talked about enlightenment and how it was supposed to give us freedom. Adorno and Horkheimer talked about how enlightenment would “free” us from myths and the ones telling the myths. We discussed in the seminar that Adorno and Horkheimer’s idea of enlightenment was good although it might not be totally true. Instead of getting freedom we started to believe in science which is told to us by scientist. We also talked about how it, today, almost is taboo to question a scientist since “they are always right”. The enlightenment therefore just made us switch which authority we believe in. 

Theme 3 – Research and Theory

The journal

I have chosen the journal Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The journal has an impact factor of 2.019 and it focus on social science research on communicating with computer-based media technologies. Within that the journal publish work from different disciplines such as psychology, political science, business, education, media studies, information science, sociology and other disciplines.

The paper

I chose the paper More than Friends: Popularity on Facebook and its Role in Impression Formation by Scott, Graham G. which have been published in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

The paper investigates the role of popularity online and its impact on targets’ personality and appearance. The study manipulated a few Facebook profiles using criteria for a popular profile (such as many friends and wallposts from other than the user oneself) and an unpopular profile (with few friends and few wallposts, mostly from the user oneself). As a total they did four profiles, two popular (one male and one female) and two unpopular (one male and one female). They then used 102 undergraduates who viewed these profiles and judged the individuals represented by each criteria (e. g. popular male etc.). The study showed that popular profiles were perceived to be more socially and physically attractive, extroverted and approachable than unpopular profiles.

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

Theory is about the connection between phenomena, it explains why, how and under which circumstances acts, events and structures occur. Theory is not references, diagrams, data, variables and hypotheses. However, these things can support the theory and thereby make it more believable.

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 think the theory in the paper I chose would categorize under Explaining and predicting. The paper are investigating which aspects of online personas that are used to form impressions. They test what kind of features that makes an online persona more attractive. They also explain why some features are more requested than others. Although I do not really think that they actually predicted something for the future this category describes their theory the most.

3.       Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?
The benefit with this theory is that it uses some kind of test and then evaluate it. So it is both a test and then an explanation about the results which is really good. A limitation is that the test in the paper that I read might be a bit subjective since it measures people’s impression. 

Theme 1 – Reflection

When I started to read the two text for the first assignment I had a hard time grasping them and understand what to reflect on. Since I study to be an engineer I am so used to always look for an answer that is either right or wrong. But in philosophy there is no right and wrong so I really had to think in another way to start reflecting on what the texts really could mean. It was also difficult to understand all the new concepts and theories that were mentioned in the texts. I am very new to philosophy and it took me a while to get in the mood and start reflecting and understand the meaning of what I read.

In the seminar we talked about why philosophy is relevant for engineers like us and Johan, our seminar leader, had a really good point. He said that we need to see things in terms of meaning and forms instead of facts. By doing this we start to think outside the box and that will help us understand these things in another way. I think he has a good point in this. The majority of my courses are math-courses, physics or other science-courses. So whenever I take a course that is not one of my “usual” courses I realize how locked in I am. I really need to think outside the box when I take these courses and I think that shows how much we actually need philosophy and its way of thinking, even though we might think we don’t need it.

Theme 2 - Critical media studies

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment

a. What is "Enlightenment"?

I think enlightenment was a way to rely more on knowledge than on myths and illusions etc. In the text, Adorno and Horkheimer writes that enlightenment wanted to dispel myths and to overthrow fantasy with knowledge. Later in the chapter they also writes that things which does not conform to the standard of calculability and utility must be viewed with suspicion.

b. What is "dialectic"?

I think it means that you have to make definitions and structures. Instead of just making assumptions based on myths or fantasies, that might not be true. We need to believe in knowledge and to make definitions and structures of what we know.

c. What is "nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

Nominalism means that the use of a general word not implies the existence of a general thing named by it. It can also refer to a position that denies the existence of universal entities or objects, but accept that particular objects or entities. I think it is important because it sometimes argues against knowledge and as an advantage for myths. A nominalist could not believe in a whole myth but he could believe in some of the things in the myth. Thereby he could question the knowledge and argue that parts of the myth might be true. This might also refer to the fact that enlightment became a new myth.

d. What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?

In their argument, myth is all forms of knowledge that existed before enlightenment. I think it is a way of create a definition of all the kinds of knowledge that existed before enlightenment. Instead of having a lot of different words describing different kind of knowledge they use “myth” as a way of representing all kinds of knowledge. Myth in this case does not necessarily contain magic or mythical creatures, it can be all kind of knowledge.

2. "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity"

a. In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

The substructure is the base of the society, it is the means of the production. For example the tools, machines, factories etc. The superstructure is built upon the base, it is everything that not directly has to do with the production. For example art, family, culture, law, media etc.

I think the point of analyzing this from a Marxist perspective is that substructure and the superstructure needs to go hand in hand. We need both for cultural production and we need them to be close to each other. We need to think about the social relations, which is a main topic in Marxism, because the social relations base the economic system and the economic system forms the superstructure.

b. Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

I think culture have revolutionary potentials, the culture change all the time. One thing that Benjamin argues about is art. A revolution in art culture is photography. When photography entered the art culture art became less original. A painting, or other form of “old” art, came in just one copy, the original. With photography you could produce more copies of one picture, from the photo negative a picture could become five, or even more, copies. That is one kind of culture revolution and I think that we maybe can compare this to enlightment that Adorno and Horkheimer talks about.

c. Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

I think natural perception is about our experiences. People experience things in different ways and all these experiences is a natural perception. A historical perception is instead that we gets influenced by historical events. For example, Benjamin talks about the fifth century where it was a great shift of population which gave birth to the late Roman art industry.

d. What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?

Benjamin means that “aura” is the originality and authenticity of a work of art. It cannot be reproduced which means that a painting has an aura but a photograph does not. Benjamin defines the aura of a natural object as distance, however close it may be. 

Theme 1 – Theory of knowledge and theory of science

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?

When Kant talks about conforming the objects to our cognition, instead of conforming our cognition to the objects, I believe he means that we need to think outside the box. If we do so we can find new viewpoints which might help us to understand a certain problem. I think that is what Copernicus did to find out that the Earth actually is moving around the sun and not the other way around. By stepping outside the box and look at the Earth instead of the stars Copernicus conformed the objects to his cognition and thereby got to a revolutionary conclusion.

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 Soctrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

I believe that seeing through our eyes partly means that we can see even though we can’t see. Socrates talk about how a man who has lost his sight still can see things because he remember what they look like, therefore he see through his eyes instead of with them.

I also think that a difference, between seeing through our eyes and with our eyes, could be that we see with our eyes when we just see and we see through them when we are processing what we are seeing. For example, we can look at a coat with our eyes and just see a coat but we can also look at that coat through our eyes and see colors, patterns, details on buttons etc. Reflecting about this I actually started thinking about a quote from the TV-series “Sherlock”. Sherlock Holmes says to Watson; “As ever you see but you do not observe”. I think that this would be a case where Watson see with his eyes and Holmes see through his eyes.

Empiricism means that what have been proven by our experiences is reliable knowledge. Socrates argues that an experience for me not necessarily is the same as for someone else. I might experience that grass has a certain kind of green color while another person might experience this green as a different tone from mine. When talking about that “knowledge is perception” I think Socrates means that knowledge could be different to different people. And since our knowledge comes from our different experiences Socrates argument can be directed towards empiricism.