TMMT studies: collecting the results

Sorry, I didn't get that we need to repost comments, not only provide links. Here they are in the same chronological order

Diana Imamgaiazova2 november 2012 11:35
Terese, I think you've found an interesting article, but I'm confused about the possible hypotheses of this research. Why should they study how individuals use their human and social capital in the game, if results are not to be implemented in real life? So I cannot clearly see how theory corresponds with the data.

Susanne,
I like your example with Fanta, it was really demonstrative.

I was also quite curious about your article, so I've glanced through it. I hope you meant this article, just to be sure: http://www.informatik.uni-rostock.de/~ct/pub_files/Aigner08TimeVis.pdf

I wonder why you believe that EP theory is used there, not theory for action and design, since it is an empirical study with a great practical value/recommendations?

I'm not much competent in the visual analysis field so it is interesting to hear how you engineering student assess the paper.

Diana Imamgaiazova9 november 2012 11:19
Kunthika, I like your choice of paper, I think that copyright law is a really important problem of today. But I couldn't find in your short summary does this paper contains explanation of "WHY copyright law isn't supported by social norm?"

Diana Imamgaiazova9 november 2012 11:29
Sandra, I also think you've found a paper where the theory is used in an exellent way. I wonder if author of the article mentioned what kind of application this theory had had before present study? I guess there might be interesting studies on how people were accepting computer/telecommunication technologies which use this theory too?


Diana Imamgaiazova9 november 2012 11:39
Sandra, it is interesting to read how you can find an application of abstract theoretical concepts to your practical work. Could you tell a bit more about your thesis? What kind of methods do you use to "collect knowledge from the users and about users"?

Diana ImamgaiazovaNovember 9, 2012 8:56 PM
Lars, the theory of 5 parameters of cultiral properties is really intriguing. As I understood it isn't original theory developed by the authors themselves? How did they come to idea to use it for analysis of commercials/advertisments and how they justify this approach?

Diana Imamgaiazova9 November 2012 21:06
Bridget, I like that you found this theory interesting and probably somehow useful for you.
I also thought about your theory... could you understand from your paper what is the difference btw these 2 theories:
- Technology acceptance model (TAM)
- Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT)?
Is the second one is more integrative?

iana Imamgaiazova9 november 2012 09:10
Johan, I like how you managed to write really short abstracts from both articles. Don't you find that second study lacks a qualitative analysis of collected data?

Diana Imamgaiazova9 november 2012 09:21
Carl, what was your own expirience of online learning? Could you propose another method of sampling (based on your expirience) which could be relevant? Personally, I think that pure qualitative methods of Zembylas' research mentioned in the paper are more relevant (he used the interviews and monthly diaries).

Diana Imamgaiazova9 November 2012 18:39
"Maybe it would have been suitable to point out specific pros and cons for qualitative respectively quantitative methods in order to motivate why the mixed research method is the most optimal one for online learning"

Emma, I think it's a really fair comment. Through authors have discussed some disadvantages of quantitative studies (focus on quantitative comparison of online learning results with traditional learning), they don't really give enough of examples.

Could you think of some pros and cons for pure quantitative/qualitative approach in regard to your topic? Would you prefer to conduct a mixed research?

Diana Imamgaiazova9 November 2012 18:59
Fernanda, I also like your example from TBBT =) How do you think what type of theory Sheldon has developed and tested (by Gregor's classification)?


Diana Imamgaiazova9 november 2012 10:26
Philip, I very much like this note:
"Now, one could argue that if you actually are into education research, you wouldn’t have any problems understanding this article. That is probably true, but then, how can you get “into” education research if all papers are written in a way that prohibit newbies like me from understanding them".

It reminds me abouth this theory of Michel Foucault that scientific discourse is designed to be incomprehensible for outsiders in order to prevent the widespread distribution of knowledge (even if scientists claim/believe to be concerned about easy-access to education).

And coming back to the topic. If I correctly understood the last 2 sentences of your entry: in your opinion, empirical research can not be a mixed research in the same time. Why?

Diana Imamgaiazova9 november 2012 11:04
Mikael, if we consider your evidence about mixed approach as the most popular among the students in your program (or you were talking about students from KTH in general?), don't you think that this approach is just more common in your field than in educational studies, for instance? I think researchers don't use the mixed approach in quite many disciplines.

Diana Imamgaiazova9 november 2012 12:26
"After all the study is based on a survey and can thus only measure a short timeframe of inputs, perhaps the first response?"

Viktor, I agree that the second-wave survey of questions (postponed survey) could provide some valueable data, but researches try to avoid the subjectivity in assessment by using other sources (such as transripts of online conferences). How do you think this source can be reliable for study of emotional presence when researchers only have access to the transcript, not to the record of conference?

Diana Imamgaiazova14 november 2012 13:53
"And so the method is something that is explained in retrospect rather than chosen from the beginning"

Joel, I agree with this notion of yours. Also why do you think that mixed research design is more demanding? I believe that sometimes spent resources can be comparable.

Diana ImamgaiazovaNovember 14, 2012 11:20 PM
"It was mentioned during the lecture as well that two types of validity are internal and external. As of now, I am not quite sure yet about what internal and external validities are."

Cheatana, it was not easy for me too. But lately I've figured out that they related to 2 general goals:
1) to find out the correlation btw variables in our experiment, and prove that changes of dependent variable are only connected to independent variable, not to other factors (this is internal validity);
2) to extend these results to all the objects of this studied class/population. If our findings are true for the whole class of similar situations/objects then we call it "external validity".

That's how I understand those terms. And you?


Diana Imamgaiazova14 ноября 2012 г., 14:33
Mary, always nice and inspiring to see your enthusiasm in learning in spite of difficulties =) I have quite practical question: how did you manage do get a copy of SPSS? Is it open-sourse program or we have some kind of "free license for students"?

During our lab the program worked fine, but I would like pratice it a little bit more too.

Diana Imamgaiazova18 november 2012 13:30
Kunthika, the article you've chosen looks really thorough and well-planned. But I too have doubts about the possible influence on consumer behaviour because of the researchers' presence. I know about similar studies conducted with special devices which can registed media usage in real time and then incript data and store it. Some of them is stationed devices (like "peoplemeter") and the some are mobile devices (those designed to registed radio consumption for instance).
Why here researchers choose this method of real time observation instead of usual practice with devices, how do you think?

Diana Imamgaiazova18 november 2012 14:00
Nicklas, good choice of acrticle! It's really great that you've found some "how-to-do" explanations in your paper. Have you learnt (from this article or elsewhere) how to formulate questions for qualitative studies in a good way? I guess open-ended questions are really demanding and sometimes I'm really confused about them being a respondent.

Diana Imamgaiazova18 november 2012 14:18
Mariam, I like your choice of article, quite peculiar experiment is described here. It's sad that you didn't mention findings. Could researchers prove the hypothesis that avatar effects on the behaviour online? Actually, it isn't clear for me how could they evaluate the degree of avatar's influence. For instance, in second part with KKK-userpics. All the participants anyway have different temperament and more or less like to tell the bloody stories, so how we know if the avatar made a big deal about the content of story or not? In other words, how they prove internal validity? :) Did they make every person to tell the story twice under different avatars (if yes, how then participant can't guess the purpose)?

Diana ImamgaiazovaNovember 18, 2012 11:38 PM
Cheatana, I think research described was really hard work for authors. I can't imagine how did they distinguish certain similar patterns of the subjective expirience of participants. But can we rely on the own judjements of participants? If I would writing about my expirience I could probably overestimate some positive effects and underestimate downsides. How this subjectivity can be diminished?

Diana ImamgaiazovaNovember 14, 2012 11:20 PM
"It was mentioned during the lecture as well that two types of validity are internal and external. As of now, I am not quite sure yet about what internal and external validities are."

Cheatana, it was not easy for me too. But lately I've figured out that they related to 2 general goals:
1) to find out the correlation btw variables in our experiment, and prove that changes of dependent variable are only connected to independent variable, not to other factors (this is internal validity);
2) to extend these results to all the objects of this studied class/population. If our findings are true for the whole class of similar situations/objects then we call it "external validity".

That's how I understand those terms. And you?

Diana Imamgaiazova25 november 2012 11:23
Nicklas, in this study of your choice do researchers compare the results of individual computer-mediated learning with collective one? Or usual сollective practice in class with computer-mediated? Don't you feel that in this case the point of reference may effect on the results of the study?

Diana Imamgaiazova25 november 2012 11:32
Christian,
have the researchers performed the user study to estimate the "life-likeness" of avatars? What are the limitations of their study?

Diana Imamgaiazova25 november 2012 11:40
Miriam, it think the paper you've finally chosen is quite appropriate for the task and also really good one. But I can't get the scvenario in testing. Why do you think they use 2 different groups testing different technology instead of test both of the interfaces in one group?

Diana Imamgaiazova25 november 2012 11:50
Niklas,
I appreciate your explanation on prototypes and would like to pose couple of questions because you seem to be really familiar with the topic:
1) don't we usually call a "theoretical" prototype (like sketch mentioned by you) by name of "model" because it still only a conceptual idea of the technology? or sometimes the concept itself is already a prototype?
2) can we test a prototype without a user study?

Diana Imamgaiazova25 november 2012 12:02
Johanna, it's great that you have expirience with creating prototypes. Actually not all the students in our group did it, like me for instance :( So I'm wondering on which stage of project development it is better to test a prototype? I had an impression that you don't really test the algorythm/design from the very beginning? Or you test-and-fix it on every stage?

Diana Imamgaiazova9 ноября 2012 г., 8:45
Stefan, thank you, it was quite a flattering comment. Concerning your observation about theories built on the previous research. You are certainly right, I let it out of sight when I was composing this entry. I suppose this type of papers belongs to some high-levels of theoretical abstraction in opposition to those "middle range theries" based on some empirical data.

Diana Imamgaiazova2 ноября 2012 г., 11:12
Mary, as I wrote above, the theory of narrative and the structural theory of the meaning (generative semiotics of Greimas) are used by the author of the article.

Could you please elaborate on what else you understand by "theory itself"? I didnt mention the semiotic square because it is not theory itself, but a certain instrument used in the framework of this theory.

Thank you for your comment

Diana Imamgaiazova9 ноября 2012 г., 2:58
Mary, I use survey of questions.
Thank you for your question!

Diana Imamgaiazova29 ноября 2012 г., 5:08
Mary, you question is adressed to the paper of my choice, right? :) I think the research could be complemented by other methods only on the following stages of this technology development.

Diana Imamgaiazova29 ноября 2012 г., 6:48
Emma, I guess that it is more like the theoretical framework is designed to cover the broad field of studies, not like Jenkins is just a genius =)

I believe that modeling is a broad concept which may include such methods as:

1) Theoretical modeling: here you just invent smth in your mind, some concept of the technology that might be developed someday like the "space gun" in the novells of Wern. Today we have the science of futurology to invent such crazy ideas =) some theoretical models are also common in theoretical physics. The theorist Ukio Misima duscusses the opportunity to use the 4th dimension to travell across the galaxy and this is quite a theoretical *model* nowadays, not just a fantasy! I'm just fascinated by this type of models =)
2) Design modeling: here you develop a scheme on paper or electronic model on computer
3) Prototyping: here you develop a real device or working technology with core functionalities of the future product

Actually in case of IT and sometimes media technology the "design model" can be something quite similar to prototype. The significant difference may occur in construction/engineering and natural sciences.

This is just my thoughts after reading some books and papers and there should be more scientific typologies on this topic of course. But I think the theoretical models and real prototypes should be distinguished in the most of sources.

Diana Imamgaiazova29 ноября 2012 г., 6:56
Bobby, I wouldn't use it by myself because I'm not a socker fan in a slightest. But friend of mine (the biggest fan ever!) already wants to purchase the app. He found it's going to solve some problems for him: now he is sad that he can't secretly follow the important games when he is at the meeting or date. =)

I can't see why you don't believe in video-conversations? I think it is a useful technology and people going to love it in future. I guess now our opportunities to use it is limited due to the high costs of mobile video streaming.

TMMT: Prospects for futher research

Hey dear course mates!

I know everybody is occupied with commenting today, but if you got couple of minutes - please help me to apply the quantitative method for my paper. :)

Currently I'm working with a survey and I need some more participants.

It takes some 5-10 mins to complete this survey and it also gives you +10 to your academic karma! :)

Here is the link to the survey

TMMT: collecting the results

Comments in others' blogs

Theme 1-2

1)  Comment 1
2) Comment 2
3) Comment 3
4) Comment 4
5) Comment 5
6) Comment 6
7) Comment 7

Theme 3
8) Comment 8
9) Comment 9 (the first after the post, for some reason I can't get the direct link to the comment)
10) Comment 10
11) Comment 11
12) Comment 12
13) Comment 13 (the first after the post, for some reason I can't get the direct link to the comment)
14) Comment 14
15) Comment 15
16) Comment 16
17) Comment 17

Theme 4

18) Comment 18
19) Comment 19
20) Comment 20
21) Comment 21
22) Comment 22

Theme 5

23) Comment 23
24) Comment 24
25) Comment 25
26) Comment 26
27) Comment 27
28) Comment 28


Answers to comments in my blog

29) Comment 29
30) Comment 30
31) Comment 31
32) Comment 32 (quite short one about my paper, probably not worth to check it for assessement xD)
33-34) Comment 33 and Comment 34 (both quite practical on SPSS software and probably are not to be assessed too)
35) Comment 35
36) Comment 36
37) Comment 37

I'm sorry for not answering some new last-minute-comments, unfortunately I didn't get much time today :)

The Special Award for the best comment in my blog goes to Emma for this comment which I've enjoyed to answer! :)

The fifth week of TMMT studies

Theoretical issues

During the lecture we learned about wide range of theoretical topics and applied studies. For me the most interesting were the parts about usability analysis and ANOVA analysis of variables (to be discussed below). Usability analysis is now becoming more and more demanded: nowadays it is used not only by designers, but also by engineers. I don't know if I ever will be involved in such a project, but it was interesting to learn how these studies are designed.

This week seminar was devoted to identifying the "research algorythms" in the papers we've read. Anyway I would label this as a theoretical task, because it does not really helped me to develop new skills of research' planning. I've noticed that I was probably only one who draw a diagramm describing the reseach stages as a cicle, not as a process. I used this conceptual frame because I believe that in applied research it is practically impossible to achieve the *final* result, which could not be clarified and improved. With our suggestions to improvement we are coming back to the first stage of research and going through the steps all over again. But probably it is appliacable for exploratory design only. 

Practical skills

I already wrote a big entry about how I was fascinated by the functionality of SPSS. Anyway I've just begun to learn about different statistical models and methods. I believe ANOVA model could be really useful for almost any study dealing with quantitative data. Basically ANOVA is described as a "form of statistical hypothesis testing heavily used in the analysis of experimental data" [1]. Unfortunately it is not so easy to learn this method of analysis, but I've found some quite easy tutorials on one-way ANOVA using the SPSS software.

1. ANOVA article on Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANOVA#Study_designs_and_ANOVAs

Theme 5: Design research

For the next theme we were asked to read the article “Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration“ by “Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H.

First of all, I’ve found idea of using vibration for rendering the football games into mobile phones to be rather amusing. I believe that researchers also used the right the way to conduct the research and present their results combining the description of prototypes architecture and conceptual schemes with findings of the user study. Comparison of tests in the two code types has provided sufficiently objective result as well as the opportunity to improve the developed technology.

From this paper I’ve learned about the 3 aspects of usability assessment: “effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users can achieve specified goals in particular environments” [1]. I also appreciate the way how researchers have compared the influence of training and different coding to usability.

In general I find the method of prototyping to be very beneficial for design research due to interactivity and possibility to improve technology by testing it. Limitation of the method is that the prototype doesn’t represent every characteristic of the simulated technology. Therefore, some of the parameters of future technology can be evaluated only approximately. In this study, researchers notice that they couldn’t estimate the willingness to buy “vibro-football” application for mobile phones only using the prototype.

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This time it was really hard to find a paper which I can critically analyze because I never studied engineering science and it’s difficult to assess the MT’ design papers. Anyway I’ve picked up the “technical” paper and spent some time translating new terms such as T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) or DIFS (Binary Format for Scenes).

So I will talk about the article “Provisioning of Adaptive Rich Media Services in Consideration of Terminal Capabilities in IPTV Environments” by Byoung-Dai Lee.

1. How is theory being used to guide the design process?

I think the general framework for this study is the theory of media convergence. The paper is focused on analyzing the Internet protocol TV (IPTV) as “a new platform for enabling the converged rich media services” [2], but anyway the precondition for this research is the justified concept of such technology that efficiently combines different media – like concept of “converged media” presented by Jenkins [3].

2. Which research method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

Method: modeling (based on the prototype testing)

Benefits: the prototype provides the opportunity to test the solution on variety of mobile devices considering the parameters of quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) in IPTV services

Limitations: in this case the user study wasn’t conducted

3. What did you learn about conducting design research from reading the paper?

Working with experimental models you don’t have to conduct the user study in every case. Sometimes the evaluation of design can be based on industrial standards or metrics developed in other researchers’ user studies.

1. Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 10(6) – p. 1026

2. Byoung-Dai Lee. “Provisioning of Adaptive Rich Media Services in Consideration of Terminal Capabilities in IPTV Environments” // IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 57, No. 3, August 2011. Pp. 1120-1127

2. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, NYU Press, 2006.

The fourth week of TMMT studies

Practical skills

During this week seminar I've learned more about the sampling for qualitative research. I think suspension point of qualitative study is generalisation of the results. The size of sample for qualitative study is usually not that large to be sure that it actually represents the parameters of the general population. We discussed this matter in our group and figured out that researchers don't always do an "averaging" of the sample in a good way. For instance, we discussed the study of gamers' attitudes based on the interviews only with "veteran" gamers and ignoring casual gamers.

Also it was interesting to hear about the papers with some "non-standart" designes like this one comparing the efficiency of communication though instant messaging or email by giving tasks for some 200 people! It would be really interesting to create own big scenario for experiments, but I also find that it is beyond the strength of a single student. 

Theoretical issues

The lecture of this week was rather confusing. The lecturer asked us some questions about her and her colleague’s paper [1] without giving any clear answers in the end. I'll try to answer just two of these questions now.

1. What empirical data was used for the paper?

First of all, what is empirical data? Empirical data is evidence based on observation or experimentation [2]. Since any experiment wasn't conducted for the study of actDressing there is no empirical data. For me it means that this paper presents a theoretical research.

2. What method was used?

I think the theoretical method used in the paper is induction which I understand as logical progression from the consideration of a specific object (single unit, experience, fact) to the more abstract concepts. It seems to be pretty obvious but sometimes it is not easy to distinguish between induction and deduction. One reason is that usual structure of the paper looks like deduction (theoretical framework => concrete examples). In this case standpoint was the observed habit of customization of robots which was discussed from certain theoretical perspective (concrete Pleo-in-pajama => semiotics theory => theory of actDressing). I’ve learned about this contradiction of abstract and concrete in the theory from my previous studies [3].

I still don’t know if I am right about this or not, but the question which I cannot really answer is what we were supposed to learn from the example of this study?

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1. Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M. (2009). Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. New York: ACM. 

2. Definition on "Empirical" from Oxford Dictionary

3. Yilenkow E. Dialectics of abstract and concrete in theoretical thinking, Moscow, 1997. – Ebook [Sorry, the book is only available in Russian so far]

Theme 4: Qualitative methods

I've chosen the article "Real brands in imaginary worlds: investigating players’ experiences of brand placement in digital games" by Mike Molesworth published in "Journal of Consumer behavior" (Issue 5, 355-366). This article has 36 citations according to Google Scholar.

In the first place I’ve found this article interesting because of the chosen research method: author used qualitative approach and conducted focused interviews with game players. In this study Molesworth tries to explore how the context of gameplay effects on the players attitude towards the brand placement? We can see that this research question requires the qualitative study, so the research design suits well to the purpose of the study.

I need to mention that I've read a variety of publications on the topic of consumer attitude towards placements in various media and most of them apply quantitative methods. Usually researchers try to understand how much attention consumers pay to the placements, whether they think positive about placed brands or not by conducting surveys. But in the case of games it is essential to consider not only "perception" of the brand message, but also interaction with brands since it is possible in virtual reality. Context of the placement becomes more important than ever.

Molesworth worked with 5 focus-groups of players aged 19 to 38, during each of experiments 6 people were involved in discussion and collective playing experience. Despite the fact that the sample size is large enough and it proves the reliability of the results, I have suggestion about the recruiting of groups for the study. Groups of 6 were formed at random, when it could be more beneficial to recruit group by some criteria: for instance, female versus male players, adult players versus young adults and etc.

Nevertheless, this does not diminish the quality of the study. The main focus was made on comparison of attitudes towards brand placement in games of different genres. Author came to conclusion that brands appeared in racing simulators were welcomed by users and the brands in strategic life-simulation games (like Sims) may become a matter to reflect on: some users compare their real-life consumption experience with the virtual world.

To conclude, the monomethod study may be improved by applying criteria for sampling. Also it could be complemented by other methods to achieve more detailed results on interaction with brands. For instance, personal interviews could be used to analyze the emotional connection with brands which probably wouldn’t be disclosed in group discussion. The limitation of focus groups is an effect of “group averaging” when respondents may support the opinion of the most competent member of the group without sharing own feelings.

The article “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” by Fernaeus & Jacobsson appeared to be almost a revelation for me. I’ve used to customize my electronic devices in order to make the usual operations with them less “automatic” and more “human-like”, but I had to idea that this practice may become an objective of scientific research. When I firstly looked thought this article it wasn’t even clear for me how study of actDressing can be related to the development of the real robotic systems?

I didn’t know that much about contemporary robotics so I was really amazed with the abilities of Pleo dinosaur. If I understood correctly one of the practical implementations of this study is possibility to “teach” Pleo to switch to the sleeping mode when the owner of the electronic pet puts the pajama on it. I wasn’t even aware that such well-developed sensitivity is already possible for robots!

From this article I’ve learned that not only textual or symbolic systems may be used to control the robotic systems, but also the physical system of gestures and acts. The concept itself was brand new for me, because I wasn’t aware about this technology in the first place. Before I’ve read this article the simple voice recognition by robots seemed to be pretty innovative technology for me. But now we passed this stage and machines already can recognize our gestures. So we can interact with robots using another communication model, but further development of technology requires certain theoretical framework. Fernaeus & Jacobsson proved that semiotics can provide the approach in order to determine which cultural/symbolic acts can be used in human-computer interaction.

The third week of TMMT studies

Practical skills: Excel versus SPSS

I can't find words to explain how useful was our seminar on SPSS. I never worked with it before, but I'm definetely going to use it for my upcoming survey. Previously I've used Excel which doesn't suit so well for sociological analysis. For instance, it is really easy to analize the cross-tabs in SPSS. I was amazed that you can do it with a couple of "clicks"!

To find cross-tabs in Excel you have to spent much more time and I can actually show you how miserable was my life without SPSS with one example from my previous studies. Here we analized the survey on media consumption among the Russian students (March, 2012). The size of sample is really small (37), because it is only educational survey.

We have 37 sheets with answers of the each respondent and one list with simple sums of positive answers (you see it below). Basicly, we know what kind of media were consumed by respondents during the day in certain time-slots. For example, we know that some 5 people were listening to radio at 10-11 am. So we can understand basic trends like "students prefer to listen radio in the morning".

But we cannot see the cross-tabs on our sum list! If we interested in multimedia consumption, then we come to "semi-manual" usage of IF function. We look though the data if the same respondent was in same time reading newspaper and listening to the music. 

That's how looks the outcome for IF function analysis. Creepy, isn't it? 

Now imagine 10 sheets like this if you like to analyse 10 different cross-tabs. And what about 100 responds (100 columns on each sheet)?

Hope now you understand how it's nice to have SPSS at your service. :) 

Theoretical issues:

Last lecture on quantitative methods was also really useful, especially the explanation on validity and realiability of data. But I become more and more concerned that you need to be very experienced in statistics in order to avoid the misenterpretation of quantitative data. I've started to look for some sources trying to find "manual" on quantitative research: for example, I've learned about the types of probability sampling in "Sociological research methods" [1]. But I've realised that I have to read more about that issue before conducting the survey.

1. Nicholas Walliman. Sociological research methods. SAGE. 2006.

Assignment 3: Quantitative methods

The article “Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement” is a methodological paper. The main purpose of the study is explanation of the benefits of the mixed research over pure quantitative or qualitative papers. Authors believe that the application of mixed approach will help to improve the quality of papers on online learning, this assumption supported by logical and relevant arguments. 

We cannot disagree with the fact that the complexity of using a mixed approach is often underestimated. I’m trying to use the mixed research in my paper, so the problems occurred in mixed research are relatively well-known for me. As rightly pointed by Lowenthal and Leech, it’s difficult to formulate research question appealing to both quantitative and qualitative methods and even more difficult to identify the research design. 

I think, in my case the question “How efficient is technology of branded content?” can be answered both from of the position of qualitative approach by performing focused interviews or quantitative approach by conduction of mass survey. The former explains the perception of brand image by audience and the latter provides data on brand awareness. It is a big challenge to bridge the findings from those two parts and make them mutually complementary. 

So the paragraphs explaining steps and data analysis techniques for a mixed research were very useful for me. I would say that main disadvantage of provided guidelines is a lack of practical examples of successful mixed studies and their designs.  

The second article “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment” is an example of good quantitative study. The hypothesis of the paper is that emotional presence exists in online learning communities. Main concepts are emotional presence, the community of inquiry, social, cognitive and teaching presence. This is an applied research, the empirical data is collected from survey of questions answered by students (N=217) and from transcriptions of online conferences during the course. Objectivity in the interpretation of scripted data is achieved through the phased coding performed by the group of coders and the methodic of factor analysis. 

Main conclusion drawn by the researches is “that emotion is present in online learning communities” and “that in online experience […] emotional presence exists in social, cognitive and teaching presence”. These statements don’t go that far because the object of the research wasn’t well-investigated before the study of Cleveland-Innes & Campbell. Therefore this research is rather limited as an exploratory study conducted in the specific context. However, this does not diminish the importance of the study: on the first stage it is necessary to identify the emotional presence in the online environment.

However, the disadvantage of this study is that the researchers are using only quantitative approach. As many proponents of this approach Cleveland-Innes & Campbell see the possibility of deepening their study in expansion of the number of samples: “study must now be replicated with […] larger samples to validate our exploratory statistical analysis”. Of course, the sample size affects the accuracy of the data, but the capabilities of a quantitative method are initially limited. 

The second week of TMMT studies

Theoretical issues

On this week we were discussing the scientific theories and their application to the media technology studies. In the first place, it is really difficult to define what theory is. The recommended articles of Gregor and Sutton&Staw were really helpful for me because I’ve realized how before I incorrectly understood theory more like a model, i.e. as an objective and simplified version of reality. But the theories are more widely applicable than models, because the latter mostly answer only to the question “How it works?”.

On the other hand, some well-designed models can be used not only for descriptive analysis, but also for prediction and they can be used as basis for invention and action. Can they replace the theories in some studies as media technology? I don’t think so, because the model itself cannot provide an explanation of the facts, reasons why this model should exist. So we need to provide a theoretical basis for modeling.

The utility of theory was discussed by Sutton and Staw, when they describe why we need a theory in the first place. The scientific research cannot be based only on pure empirical data; it demands an intellectual instrument for the correct interpretation and verification of data.

I was also curious about the cases when the hypothesis cannot be empirically verified because of the lack of data. Would such a paper “over-theorized” and even speculative? Probably the whole branch of theoretical physics is no more than speculation when he cannot obscure some dozen of the hypothetical particles? But as Stephen Hawking explains in "A Brief History of Time" physical theory is supposed to produce predictions for a category of physical systems, even if not every prediction can be tested. But theory cannot exist without the sufficiently strong evidences supporting it.

Practical skills

I’m trying to develop my skill of research article critics by commenting on the entries of other students. Sometimes it’s really difficult to support a “Socratic dialogue” when you have to ask “deep” or at least meaningful questions, which means not only inquire an information but also give a reason to think to our opponent.

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Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time, 1988. 

Assigment 2: The theory of theory

A bit of theory

Gregor’s defines theory 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”.

Theory is:

In other words, theory is an intellectual instrument that allows us to *simplify reality* in order to understand and explain it, adapt to it using predictions or change it by new inventions. Theories justify our expectations of reality and they are subjects of verification by comparison with reality. A new theory cannot be discovered as a new galaxy, because it doesn’t exist in an “outer space”. Theory is a result of intellectual work, it contains logical arguments about what is expected to occur and why it is expected.

Theory is not:

Theory is not a mere academic formality. It doesn’t equate to any of the features of scholarly article (references, data, variables, diagrams and hypotheses), nor to their combination. Theory is not limited by referencies, it appeals to them. Theory can only be proved, revised or discredited by empirical data and only illustrated by diagrams. Theory isn’t hypotheses, because the latter doesn’t give any explanations.

How theory is used?

I’ve chosen the article “Transmedia Storytelling: Implicit Consumers, Narrative Worlds, and Branding in Contemporary Media Production” by Carlos Alberto Scolari published in “International Journal of Communication” (impact factor: 1.5).

I’ve found this article interesting and matching for our assignment because of the way how author rethinks the old theories and implies them to the new object. In the article Scolari himself reflected on this matter: “Many researchers […] consider semiotics to be an outdated or old discipline that only considers texts and has nothing to say about real subjects or processes”.

I have to admit that I was among those “many” who didn’t believe that semiotics has something to say about transmedia storytelling and offline/online branding strategies. Scolari shows how semiotics may be used as conceptual framework for the studies of multimedia production. “If the researcher is dealing with texts — for example, a transmedia narrative expressed in a collection of movies, comics, films, video games, etc. — a semiotic approach is necessary and beneficial”, argues Scolari and proves his position with various studies applying the semiotic theory.

I would say that the main theories used in the article are the narratology and the generative semiotics (structural version of semiotics), although Scolari also discuss other instruments.

Narratology (the theory of narrative structure)	Generative semiotics
Type: Theory for analyzing	Type: Theory for explaining
Benefits: the theory enables us to investigate how transmedia narratives expressed in multimedia series of comics, books, films, games, etc. (like Harry Potter series). Another problem observed in this theory is analysis of strategies of fictional world expansions.	Benefits: semiotics provides explanation of the generation of meaning in the multimodal world. Theory also explains the formation of implicit customer groups and examines brands as symbolic objects (semiotics of branding).
Limitations: Narratology implies formal methods of analysis, which doesn’t include studies of the psychology of perception, the subjective interpretation of the texts	Limitations: Sociological and ethnographic aspects of consumer behavior are not considered