torsdag 19 december 2013

My Blog Comments Throughtout the Course

Interesting thoughts about the power of mass media. As you say, most people will probably accept the stories presented in them with more or less no source critisism. Do you think the source critisism of people has become better or worse these days compared with the time of which the text was written?
Cool to get some insights on branding terminology there! A very hypothetical question: do you think the market for "luxury brands" will keep on growing or do you think people will start to get tired of them soon?
Hehe, interesting example with the witch hunts. I do however believe that such events occured in a time that was very different to the 20th or 21st centrury. Back then I guess you relied on rumor spreading and hearsay rather than unbiased media. But of course, media nowdays aren't always unbiased. As you wrote in your blog post, they can even be deceptive. So I guess that a similar witch hunt scenario is not impossible in today's modern world. Especially if you're able to control the media in such a centralized way that per example North Korea does. If we were to accept that such a scenario is possible today, do you have any cool example of where so may have happened or may happen?
Could be. What I believe that I essentially meant was that the more information you introduce - the more analysis or explanatory efforts have to be performed. However, more information could naturally (if the information is equally value adding) lead to more insights and more aspects of a discussion.
How much do you guys take the impact factor into account when you write academic texts? Do you perceive that professors generally value journals differently when grading?
Hey! I believe your thoughts correlate a lot with mine. I'm interested in what you think about the importance of the impact factor? How much do you think you should value the impact factor when, per example, writing the master thesis? Do you think professors generally take the impact factors into account when they're grading an academic text?
I would definitely say that the hunt for Hussein, or Bin Ladin not to say the least, was a contemporary example of a witch hunt. I guess it is quite deeply rooted in human psychology that we need a single "black sheep" to blame and channel all our frustrations on. It is much easier to hate and blame Bin Ladin rather than the whole al-Qaida. That is just too complex. Therefore I believe that modern witch hunts will stay for years to come as it is an effective and easy way of letting people know who to blame.
Thank you, Adam!

That is a hard and good question. First of all, I think you would have to have a viable insights in the community for visually impaired and blind - and that is something that I would say that I sadly do not possess at the moment. However, one can only guess that new solutions in the shape of perhaps improved interfaces and tools for this community has been developed throughout time. Therefore I believe that the article has perhaps lost a little bit of relevance today.

Regarding the second question, I do not really think so. That is why I thought it was viable for me to still choose this article, as the methodology may still be very similar to what we would conduct today. Just look at what type of books we got recommended to read about certain methodology in this course. Some of them are written in the 80s.
Hey! I would say that I mostly agree with you. And I definitely think that you should evaluate the content rather than relying on some generic impact factor. However, I am still a little bit interested in how professors relate to the impact factor. I can imagine that some value high impact factors more than others, and act thereafter. Would be interesting to investigate!
Hello Ekaterina! Interesting to hear! I would say that I work very much the same. However, I have now noticed that I glance at the impact factor before I dig into a journal, after having this particular theme in this course. I do not know if that is a good or a bad thing. It might hinder me from looking deeper into some journals which then might have some golden articles that I therefore miss, but still it might provide me with a better chance of providing high quality data.
Hi Jenny,

Yes, I agree with you on that the professionals probably had a lot of insights that the visually impaired or blind people could not possess, as one cannot always be aware of how you are viewed by others. However, I do not think that the focus groups in this case can be viewed as something that you would call a pilot study. I believe that a pilot study is something you call a "trial study" of a specific method. Such as if they would have tried out their preliminary focus group method on a smaller group of people in order to see if the method worked or not. That is what I think at least.
Hi Johan,

Indeed! I think it is quite important to highlight all parameters that may be of interest when looking at the study from outside the author's perspective. However, I am not sure if that would have made any difference in the results in this case. Perhaps they would have drawn different conclusions though, if they would have had a discussion around why their results became what the were. There you can ask yourself if, per example, the environment in which the interviews were conducted, had any affect on the answers!
I think it is good to be transparent in pretty much all cases when it comes to academic research. No-one wins on someone having a secret agenda or if someone uses a fact which the person knows is not true. Hopefully we can conduct research with facts that we believe are just that - facts! :)
What do you guys think about the course? Do you think it would have been valuable to have read before we wrote the bachelor thesis? Or do you perhaps think that we would not have taken in as much information and that we would not have been as interested in the subjects back then? Perhaps it is fundamental to have it before you write your master thesis?
Hey Marit,

Thank you for a good text. I was quite interested by this theme's topic, about the sort of "digi-physical" approach of the two papers. Do you think that there is a bright future for these digi-physical solutions? As you say, as robots may start to become a more normal part of our daily lives, don't we need to integrate these kinds of mindsets in order for them to blend in? Can you picture yourself dressing a robot in ten years?
Hi Cim,

Thanks for some interesting paragraphs! Firstly, I would like to say that I am quite intrigued by the article you chose. As we have studied a bit of e-learning in the social media technologies course, I am wondering how quantifiable this study is. Did the study say if the students were happy about the program? In that case there must great potential in these kind of tools! Do you, by reading this article, think language courses will more and more become something you can take as a distance course?
Hello Mr Friberg,

I love the titles of both articles that you chose, it is tempting to take a closer look at both of them. However, my question is here about the first one - the young Russians and their relation to those media channels. I wonder if they contrasted these young Russians and compared them to some other study, perhaps a similar one conducted somewhere else? Because I guess it is hard to state what types of insights you gain if you just look at the spectrum of these young Russians and do not compare them to people from another culture and whatnot, right? Perhaps that is the main point of a qualitative study though, that it is hard to quantify and generalize globally. What do you think?
Hey Marit!

I think you have received some quite interesting comments here. I would like to include myself in the discussion of conducting interviews of children. In one way I think that it should not differ much more than conducting research on adults. Questions should not be leading/misleading and whatnot. However, children probably have not developed the same level of critical thinking when receiving a question, and therefore you might have to be even more clear and mindful of what you are asking.
Hey Filip!

Interesting articles! My thoughts here goes to the first you presented. What do you think about the usage of external incentives in a case like this? Do you think the usage of per example cash or course credits can harm the research in any way? My thought is that such an approach might attract a specific kind of participant, that does not care much about the research. But I don't know if that is a bad thing though... Perhaps they will answer quick and truthfully, but perhaps they just "throw in" some answers as they do not care about the outcome. What do you think?
As we attended the same seminar, it would be interesting to hear if you will bring any of the approaches we discussed regarding "focus group conversation stearing" with you in your upcoming life as a researcher. :) Do you per example think the idea of the group into smaller groups of two to be a good idea? I am actually thinking about using such methods in the future if I feel that I am not getting the debate that I am looking for.
Hey Jenny,

First of all, thanks for a well written text! I found this interesting as well and I remember that I thought about it when we discussed the article during the seminar this week. I guess that the subject in itself is quite a sensitive one, and that it holds a lot of underlying personal worries or agendas of the participants of the study, when they get questions about their diet or weight. Maybe they did not get these sort of questions and the article was solely focused on evaluating the application usage rather than lifestyle changes. Regardless I think this might have impacted the results in some way as the subject is sensitive as it is. I realize this might be quite an abstract comment but how do you interpret the authors relation to this? :)
Hi Louise,

What a wonderful blog, and thanks for a well written text! What I wonder is regarding the first text. Do you think that it was sufficient with these interviews or should the conclusions of the article perhaps be backed up with more methods in your opinion? Would it not have been interesting to map these 61 young adults interview responses with a quantitative questionnaire, where you can look at the thoughts of a much greater representation of the public, per example?
Hi miss Louise Herlin,

Interesting reflections, I feel that you and I think much alike here. I have also been wondering about what you here call the 'golden rule', regarding participants in quantitative and qualitative studies. After a lot of thought, I think that there isn't any. I think you will have to look at every case - every research article - as a separate, and formulate the amount of participants thereafter. Sometimes the research will require 10 interviewees in order to 'be good', other times maybe 70. However, there are some research that has been done in these fields that you can look more closely into. I heard that some methodology expert had recommended the amount of 5-7 participants in a focus group per example.
Hi Sara,

Interesting choice of article. As you pointed out, it is a problem that they did not point out how many participants there were in each focus group. Do they however provide any other data about the groups? If there were issues with letting everyone speak or something alike. Do you think the results of the study could have varied depending on all these factors? In that case, how credible is this paper in your opinion?
Hi Mimmi,

Thank you for a well written text! Regarding the first text about students' online community usage in Hong Kong, do you think that there is an issue with only asking the students regarding their interactions on Facebook, and actually not measuring it? The reason why I wonder is because that I, a couple of weeks ago, wrote about an article that investigated the differences in so-called 'self-reported' data versus actual logged data. There the authors concluded that there are quite clear differences in the two different data pools. Would have been interesting to contrast those figures in this study!
Hey Mr,

An interesting read! I spent some time pondering about what you mentioned as a weakness in part two. That so-called multimethodology was not used in the article. My question here is if that must always be a weakness. Does an article automatically become more credible if it makes use of more methods? I am not sure. Certainly, if used correctly, different methods can build upon each other in order to achieve 'greater goals'. But if the scope is small enough and the theory is not as complex, the use of just one or perhaps two methods may be just about right?
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Evaluating and reflecting upon Theme 6

So this week's theme was about qualitative research and case studies. A theme that I on beforehand felt that my knowledge was quite sufficient within. I per example remember to have had many discussions about how to relate to interviews, focus groups, observations etc. in several courses that I have taken before. But as in pretty much every previous week of this course, I got the privilege to look at certain things from new perspectives this time as well.

During the week's first seminar we discussed the articles we chose in regards of qualitative methodology usage. As most times, I find it interesting to listen to others papers and what types of methods were used. An approach that I have not given much thought before is innovative ways of connecting methodologies to "build up" one another. I will definitely keep that in mind for my master thesis. My paper was this week about the Internet experience for visually impaired and blind people - a topic that intrigued me. The authors had a clear thought that the focus groups that they used should be the foundation for the interviews that they later conducted. A method that we in the group agreed on was somewhat of a good idea. However, as they did not provide that much information on how they conducted the focus groups, and why they even chose focus groups over other viable methods, I promoted a discussion about focus groups. This is also because of that I have often felt a little bit lost when conducting focus groups myself. I have often found it hard to be the moderator of a good discussion where everyone can have their say if you have one or two more dominant persons in the group. We discussed this and some possible solutions to that certain problem.

Now that this is the last blog post of the course, I would like to take the opportunity to shortly evaluate it as a whole. I think it was very valuable as a course that you take before you write your thesis. I cannot say that I am still worrying about anything in particular when it comes to parameters of methodology or report format - something that I might have done a little bit before the course actually. However, why not move the course - or make something similar - before the bachelor thesis as well? I think that it would have been very valuable to take in during that time, why wait until afterwards? Well well, all in all I have to say that I enjoyed the course and I believe that the content of it was relevant and important. Thanks!

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fredag 13 december 2013

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

Qualitative methodology
For this week's subject I chose the article The Internet for the Blind and Visually Impaired by Bow, Schauder, Williamson and Wright. The article was published in volume 7 of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, issue 1, 2001. I realize that 2001 in this case might be a bit old, but I believe that the date should not impact the opportunity of conducting a good methodology analysis. I therefore thought that I could choose the article without regrets, as I was quite intrigued by its title.

 The purpose of the article is to explore the potential role of the Internet in information provision for the community of blind and visually impaired. The methodology is formulated through a qualitative study of fifteen blind or visually impaired persons, and sixteen professionals who work with such persons. The study was based on two focus group sessions with the professionals, each followed up by individual interviews with the blind or visually impaired persons. These two different sets of focus groups and interviews were made on two different locations in Australia - in the state of Victoria and New South Wales, in order to determine if there is any difference in results between urban and rural areas. 

 It is not really stated how they conducted their focus groups or interviews in detal. It is however stated that the focus groups were more explorative and the data they extracted from these worked as a foundation for the individual interviews. One could therefore assume that they conducted somewhat of an open, or unstructured, form of focus groups, whilst the indivudual interviews were more structured or perhaps semi-structured. I assume this because these types of interview-models varies in fit for different purposes. An unstructured model is per example useful when you want to explore an area openly and let the interviewee speak freely and elaborate extensively. Such a structure could therefore have been useful for the focus groups when the authors explored the unique insights of the professionals. When they later possessed these insights themselves, they could more easily target questions to the interviewees depending on what they wanted to get out of the interviews, and what the professionals could pinpoint before. I would say that the most common interview-model in those cases is the semi-structured interview, which still allows the interviewee to elaborate to a certain extent - but with the interviewer still keeping track of the pre-made set of quesitons. 

 A problem with the method is this particular uncertainty - that they did not state in more detail how they formatted and conducted their focus groups and interviews. The results they extract therefore receives an image of quite arbitrary data, which is unfortunate. Furthermore, they state themselves that they searched for interviewees in different situations and positions in life (parameters such as age, partner, economy etc.), which they succeeded to attract. However, even if this is a qualitative study, perhaps the result would have been more credible and reliable if they would have examined and chosen a set of blind and visually impaired persons with equal parameters. It is hard to generalize a qualitative study as it is.

 Case studies
As Eisenhardt (1989) puts it, the case study is a research strategy which focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings. It is mostly that you look into and investigate a (or multiple) specific case and extract data from it that you might find useful in similar settings. It can be through both interviews, questionnaires, observations etc. so both qualitative or quantitative data can be extracted through the case study strategy.

The article which I chose that conducts a case study method is called Public Service Broadcasting's Participation in the Reconfiguration of Online News Content. This particular paper I found in 18th volume of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, issue 3 (2013). 

The article analyzed generically through parts of Eisenhardt's model:

Getting Started: The purpose of the article is to analyze the phenomenon of online participation in public television channels and to compare the different strategies used to encourage participation. 

Selecting Cases: The case analysis is focused on five news websites of public radio and television corporations in Italy, France, Germany, United Kingdom and Spain. To me the selected countries should provide a good mix of cultural insights, but still within a similar cultural sphere.

Crafting Instruments and Protocols: The analysis is based on two seperate observations of the websites where they look at, and compare data in a qualitative fashion. They observe the content and look further into how it is being implemented. To me it would have been interesting to conduct interviews with the ones responsible for the strategy and/or content instead or as a complement. However, by using this method you should also be able to gain insights, of course.

Enfolding Literature: The literature seems well organized and credible.

Reaching Closure: Conclusions are drawn from each specific case rather than putting them all into a big picture, presenting a general conclusion. Maybe that was hard to achieve in this case, but it would have been interesting to see more comparative conclusions.
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