THEME 3 - Prereflection

Research Journal

I have chosen the journal “Social Networks”, which is an international journal of structural analysis with an impact factor of 3.381.

The journal is interdisciplinary and publishes paper within a wide range of disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, history, economics and others.

I think it is most relevant to media technology because the new developed social networks are a pretty new technology that has affected our society a lot and also because of the interdisciplinary quality. Especially since I this period at KTH are taking a class called “Social media technologies” where we learn about and discusses different social technologies and among them social networks.

The journal can be found here: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/social-networks/

Research Paper

The paper I chose is called The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ and is written by Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe.  It was published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (Volume 12, Issue 4, July 2007) and the journal has an impact number of 1,778.

The paper presents the results of a study conducted to examine the relationship between the popular social networking site Facebook and the formation and maintenance of social capital. The notion social capital refers to “the resources accumulated through the relationships among people”. Based on their research the authors propose a set of hypothesis that analyses the relationship between Facebook and social capital.

The study was performed by sending an online survey to undergraduate students at Michigan State University (MSU) with questions about their Facebook usage, why they use the site, their self-esteem and also about their satisfaction with life at MSU. Out of the 800 students the survey was sent to, a total of 286 students answered and completed it. After collecting and compiling data the researchers performed regression analysis in order to compare their results and do test their hypotheses.

The results showed that students use Facebook primarily to maintain relations with people they knew before Facebook, “offline relation”, such as friends from high school. The study also demonstrates “a robust connection between Facebook usage and indicators of social capital, especially of the bridging type”. The bridging type of social capital refers to low-ties, in other words loose connections. They also found that students with low self self-esteem who do not feel so satisfied with their life at MSU could increase their social capital by using Facebook more.

I found the study very interesting and well executed but there are some limitations. The limited selection of responders, all of them were students at the same university and the use of Facebook may differ a lot between different schools, because of different cultures and climates there. There is also a lack of critique and discussion about their choice of method, which would have been interesting. For example why they chose to conduct an online survey instead of interviews or a discussion about the benefits and limitations with the chosen method.

The paper can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x/full

1.

There is a lack of consensus on exactly what theory is but it can be described as something we construct to understand, explain and describe the world. Theories do not exist by them selves. They are constructed to answer the questions why and how.

Theory can be seen as universal statements and provides explanations and predictions and is being testable. It is also the result of generalized thinking when trying to explain how things, such as the nature, works. 

Theory is based on information from some observations or experiments and is not data, diagrams, variables or hypotheses, but that can be used to support the theory itself.

A theory can be proven to be inapplicable by other theories or questioned by other observations that do not support it. It can also be considered as an accepted belief if a majority of people accepts it.

2 + 3.

I consider the major theory that is presented in the selected paper as analysis theory, which is the first type of theory according to Table 2 in the text by Gregor where it is defined as: “Says what is. The theory does not extend beyond analysis and description. No causal relationships among phenomena are specified and no predictions are made.” (Shierly Gregor, 2006)

In the paper there is a study conducted and a following analysis on the results. Since no other methods are used the researchers cannot state or generalize too much, either not make predictions about the future. That is also one of the limitations with this type of theory; generalizations cannot be performed.

On the other hand, the benefits of using the analysis theory is that it is easy to do, since it does not extend beyond analysis and description.

Shierly Gregor (2006) "The nature of theory in information systems".
http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~petterog/Kurs/INF5220/NatureofTheoryMISQ.pdf