Theme 3 - Research and Theory

What is theory?

According to Gregor in the article “The Nature of Theory in Information Systems”, theory is based upon abstraction and generalization about phenomenon. Theory itself is not just a set of data, references or hypotheses, even though it can be developed from it. Instead theory is a combination of Analysis, Explanation, Prediction, Explanation and prediction, and Design and action. These categories poses different questions, or rather the answer to these questions. For example, what something is, how it is, why, when, where, what it will be and so on. She says that you could look at these cateogories "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".

Research Journal

I chose the journal “Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication”, from the examples page. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1083-6101)

As the name implies it publishes articles with focus on computer-based media technologies with the subject of social science research on communication.

Research Paper
The paper I have decided to examine is called "A very popular blog: The internet and the possibilities of publicity" by the author Brenton J. Malin (2011). (http://nms.sagepub.com.focus.lib.kth.se/content/13/2/187.full.pdf+html)

There are two different types of publicity presented in the article, the first one is for openness and the second one is for promotion. In traditional broadcasting as well as in more modern online communications these two aspects of publicity have contrasting, drastic implications. The purpose of dividing publicity into these aspects is to capture different problems in democratic communication. The more a communications channel opens up the more the diversity of opinions will increase, but at the same time the focus for particular topics will decrease. If a channel needs a good debate climate, the channel needs to be established the other way around, with great focus on certain topics. This will inturn increase the promotion for those topics. The problem with the second one is that with less different opinions in the channel, the discussion gets compressed into one big homogenized message, and the few opposing opinions will be excluded.

The two types of publicity are therefore really important in the structure of communicating means and the discussion of these democratic potentials should be increased and taken into account.

Malin argues that as the mainstream media continues to expand, and with that their promotion, we are at risk of overestimating the potential impact of open networks in the digital democracy. Everyone can easily publish and upload stories, articles and opinions online, but this is also the problem. Since everyone has the same access and tools, your own material will drown in a sea of similar works. Therefore it is really hard to reach an audience, to get people to see and read what you have created.

Search engines is also at fault for this saturation, by ranking results by popularity already established and popular sites will continue to dominate the market and push away less popular ones. Internet is prone to rapid change, and online communication is not immune to influence from powerful sources. Since the internet exists in an economic, legal and cultural context and since the corporations mostly don’t work for a neutral internet, the digital democracy and the publicity it lies upon may be at risk.

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The paper doesn’t go too deep into analyzing why things are a certain way, it’s mostly about stating the facts. Therefore my interpretation is that the purpose of this article is just to be descriptive. To reason about publicity and its cores, how our perception of the internet as a neutral, pure tool for democratic discussion should reflect these inherent properties. Something that I found to be a bit odd was that the author wasn’t very clear on where she was going, in the end she wound up arguing about digital democracy instead of putting more focus into the perception of publicity and the problems and consequences that comes with it. It felt kind of like she side-tracked a bit.

I think the major theory presented is open channels leads to a fauna of opinions, but with a bad discussion and focused channels leads to a good debate climate but with few opinions. The paper mostly argues what is, it tries to go deeper and analyze somewhat how and why, but not to much i feel. Still i think the most suiting theory may be theory number II, Explanation. This kind of theory is not trying to predict what is gonna happen in the future nor is there any solid arguments on which the best way of solving the issue of publicity are.