Theme3 pre-study

Select a research journal that you believe is relevant for media technology research.

I choose Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, this journal is one of the oldest web-based internet studies, peer-reviewed scholarly journals which have been published quarterly continuously since June 1995. It focus on social science research on communicating with computer-based media technologies which include original research articles and meta analyses of prior research for communication, sociology, media studies and information science ect. The impact factors of this journal with five year is 3.799.

Select a research paper that is of high quality and relevant for media technology research.

Title: Social Networking Sites: Their Users and Social Implications — A Longitudinal Study

With the rapid adoption of social networking sites (SNSs), there have more important questions about the social implications surfaced. Such as using social networking sites will give negative effects on social activates, decreasing time on spend with friends and family; the SNS users will easily behave loneliness.

This paper is an exploratory research based on previously related researches to examine and analyze the different social capital between SNS users and nonusers which the social capital include the term (1) frequency of face-to-face interaction with close friends, (2) number of offline acquaintances, (3) level of bridging capital, and (4) absence of reported loneliness. It also compared the social capital with five distinct SNS user types which are Sporadics, Lurkers, Socializers, Debaters, and Advanced. The author also give the hypothesis that (1)SNS user would have more frequent contact than nonusers. (2)SNSs would be positive related to offline social networks. (3)SNS users experience less loneliness than nonusers.

In this study, the author design a questionnaire use an unique and extensive set of longitudinal data from a representative sample of online users (N = 2,000, age 15–75 years) in Norway from 2008 to 2010. The author measured the research from demographic factors, SNS user or nonuser, SNS user types, informal sociability offline, loneliness, and bridging capital; he gave the result as a table view to compare and analyze.

In the result, the author give the answer that SNS users report significantly more face to face interaction, more acquaintances and have greater bridging capital than nonusers. But there also have some specials such as the “male of advanced and debater users spend more time on SNS but report more loneliness”; “Females use SNSs more frequently and interact more socially than males”; “Socializers had greater social capital, but they are not expanding their social network over time”, the author think this is because “people may be stressed by too many connections, and thus not willing to increase their weaker ties over time”. The author also give the idea of future research for this.

As my view, this research had a clearly research purpose and used an precise effective investigation method, but the results does not have complete accuracy since it was limited by operationalization of social capital and only tested in Norway. However, I believe that the SNS play a positive role in human being interaction and will be more completely in future.

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

Theory is answering the question of why. 

 Theory is a set of assumptions, propositions or accepted facts that can followed in order to get a reasonable explanation of cause and effect relationships for an observed phenomenon (from the Greekthorós, a spectator ). Theory is not references, neither data, neither lists of variables/constructions, diagrams nor hypotheses with the describe of the authors.

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 used in my selected paper are Design and action, Analysis, and Explaintion. The author design a questionnaire to collect data by using a social network site. He make the results as a table view to analyze and explain the answer of questions and hypothesis he provide before.

3.    Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?

I think these theories the author used in the paper is a perfect combination. The experimental data and results makes his research have more convincing, the explanation of what he did and result analyze help the reader have a more understanding for his study. But unfortunately, the design and action theory is not perfect in this research cause some of reasons be limited.

Sources:

Petter, B. Brandtzæg (2012) Social Networking Sites: Their Users and Social Implications — A Longitudinal Study, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 17, Issue 4, p. 467-488, July 2012.

Gregor, S. (2006). The Nature of Theory in Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 30(3), 611-642.

Sutton, R. I. & Staw, B. M. (1995). What Theory is Not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 371-384.