Final reflections of the course Theory and Method for Media Technology.
Theme 1-3 was the abstract part of the course. Here we went through and learned how to apply, and think more philosophical and how to interpret the world. During the first theme I thought it was hard to understand Kant’s text, though I have never touched this kind of philosophical thinking before. It was easier to understand Plato’s text and the conversation between Socrates and Theaetetus because they discussed what knowledge is/is not and you could follow their conversation gradually. Kant touched upon a subject I have never heard or thought about and it was hard to understand and apply his theory of the world. I learned to think in a new way, beyond the scientific and engineering thinking, and I came to realize that I really enjoyed this kind of thinking. I e.g learned that a priori is knowledge independent on experience while a posteriori you have to examine a hypothesis. I think it was a good intention to start the course with an abstract theme that we later on could apply to more concrete themes.
Theme 2 also had a touch of philosophy. But yet it was still more concrete when discussing the enlightenment and the critique of enlightenment. From reading history in high school I have learned that enlightenment is an epoch where you started to question religion and scientists started to explore the world and how phenomenons appeared. I can apply the philosophical aspect from theme 1 to this theme. It’s not only about the enlightenment in itself, but one also needs to understand that you have to be critical to everything you see and perceive. Håkan gave us the outstanding example of Plato’s cave, where the idea world differs from the material world. The idea world where our ideas lie, while in the material world we see objects through our senses first, to realise what kind of an object it is we see. Plato means that we are trapped in the material world and that we have to step out of the cave, in to the idea world where everything becomes more philosophical and we start to criticize the things we actually see.
In Theme 3 we learned what theory is. We were now supposed to read an article of our choice and apply what type of theory the research in the article had. We were supposed to answer some questions about what theory is, and it was too rarely abstract. At the seminar we discussed my paper about how homeless youth’s in Los Angeles use the Internet, and we came to the conclusion that the type of theory I had chosen, was not the best theory to apply to the paper.
These three themes have been more abstract than the second part of the course, but by learning how to think in a more philosophical path, I think it too can make your research better. Even though researchers may think they examine something in a more scientific manner, I think they always apply philosophy, even if they are not aware of it. I have learned during the course that the way we think, while e.g constructing design research or examining a phenomenon, that there are philosophical aspects to it. We want the knowledge to examine how phenomenons appear, and this we do a posteriori. But we also want to examine the a priori, the things we know exist, but why do they exist, and are there any consequences to it? We want to examine if something is true or not or how a phenomenon appears and so on, which is similar to Plato’s cave, because we do not only settle with the things we see through our senses, we want to examine and interpret the things we see, and why they appear. We need theory to base a hypothesis on, so we can reject the hypothesis or not. So research, and different methods we use to examine a phenomenon, do have a philosophical appearance to it.
Lectures 4-6 was more about how to design a research study using different methods. We touched upon qualitative and quantitative methods, and also case-studies. Throughout the themes we were also supposed to read articles consisting qualitative, quantitative and case-study of our own choice. I found it hard to choose a quantitative paper though I realized most papers combined quantitative and qualitative methods. When e.g using a questionnaire as the main method, there would still be some “free-answering” questions in it. Or when using a qualitative study the researchers could have a questionnaire for the correspondents to fill in before moving on to the qualitative study. I think it can be hard to only direct to one method when a researcher's purpose is to receive as much data that can strengthen your research question as possible. When not combining methods, you can miss out on several aspects and variables that your research could have included, when it comes to complex research. But when designing a case-study, it is preferable to combine different methods because then you are studying an already existing phenomenon, but when studying it more thoroughly one method is not enough.
When combining methods you do not have to combine different qualitative and quantitative methods. One can too combine several qualitative methods to gain a more solid result. For example, when I read my qualitative paper for theme 5, the researcher used ethnographic methods which is a combination of different qualitative methods such as interviews, observation and analyzing. Eva-Lotta Sallnäs talked about in her lecture, that one can design a qualitative research but still get a quantitative result as well. I also think, as Haibo Li talked about in his lecture, that it is important to define the right research problem at the beginning so you do not end up in a dead end. Though I think, when combining methods in a complex research problem, it can be easier to move your way around the problem, but I also think too much information can be a problem in itself (e.g time consuming).
