Pre reflection - Theme 3: Theory and research

Computers in Human Behavior is a journal within the media technology field. It has an impact factor of 2.694. Its content deals with the use of computers from a psychological perspective. Both the use of computers in psychology, psychiatry and related disciplines but also the psychological impact of computer use on individuals, groups and society. The computer is only discussed as a medium that man uses to express himself.

A tale of two sites: Twitter vs. Facebook and the personality predictors of social media usage

The main question of this study is whether the use of facebook and twitter for socialising and information exchange is related to personality. And the main concept is that Facebook and Twitter is designed in different ways which also allows for different uses of the two sites.

To investigate the role of personality in the use of Facebook and Twittter this study used the Big Five together with Need for Cognition and Sociability. The Big-Five is five broad personality traits and these are Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. And to get more information on the social versus information exchanging view they also assess the participant's Need for Cognition and Sociability. They present an number of hypotheses, founded in previous studies, on how these personality traits is linked with the use of Facebook and Twitter.

The study itself was in the form of a online survey. For assessing the Big Five they used the 44-item Big Five inventory. Sociability was assessed using the IPIP Sociability scale and the Need for Cognition was assessed using the IPIP Version of the Need for Cognition scale. A new scale was developed for measuring Twitter and Facebook use. All scales used likert type response with seven options from Strongly Disagree(1) to Strongly Agree (7). There were also a demographic part with questions about age, sex, employment status and continent. The participants were found through an ad on Facebook and Twitter.

There were 300 participants in the study (97 males and 207 females). The participants were aged between 18 and 63 with a mean of 27. Most of the respondents was European, 18 % was North America, 9 % were from Asia and 3 % from other continents. The participants were mostly young females something that could have affected the study.

Four Facebook and Twitter usage variables is calculated from the data depending if the respondents used Facebook and Twitter for socializing versus Information sharing; Facebook Social, Facebook Info, Twitter Social, Twitter Info. These four usage variables were analyzed in terms of their correlations with each of the personality variables.

The result is that several of the personality traits were correlated to the different Facebook and Twitter uses. “Facebook Social” correlated positively with Sociability and Neuroticism. While

“Twitter Social” correlated positively with Conscientiousness, Openness and Sociability, but was low in neuroticism which may indicate that Twitter isn’t used to mitigate loneliness. “Facebook Info” was positively correlated with Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness and Sociability, and negatively correlated with Conscientiousness and Need for Cognition. The use of Twitter for informational purposes was found to correlate positively with Conscientiousness and Need for Cognition and negatively with Neuroticism, Extraversion and Sociability.

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

According to the article “What theory is not” theory is the answer to the question “why?”. If data is showing that something is happening then theory is the explaining of why this is happening. But I believe that this is a narrow look at what theory is, because in the article “The nature of theory in information systems” theory can explaining, and also predicting, analysing, and for design and action by saying how something should be done. I think that theories are tools to explain, predict and understand different matters. They are a set of statements that all is true and when combined make a theory that might not been proved.

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?

They believe that differences between Facebook and Twitter is showing in which people are choosing to use them and what kind of personality these people have. Differences they mention are that Twitter uses alias so you can choose to be anonymous while Facebook on the other hand is built on the fact that you should show who you are by posting information about yourself and adding friends. Twitter is more focused on what you say than who you are. The authors argue that the social pressure is less on Twitter and that makes the reasons to use Twitter differ from why people use Facebook. This theory can be characterized as an explanation theory, since it says what is and why.

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

I think that the theory is kind of narrow, but it is just what they want to examine in this study and I believe that the theory is good for that purpose. The limitations might be that you miss some interesting knowledge about Facebook and Twitter usage that isn’t connected to socialising and information exchanging and that people might use these social platforms for other reasons.

Pre-reflection: Theme 1 - Theory of knowledge

• In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?

Before this quote Kant talks about metaphysics and, as I understand, how he thinks that the field hasn’t reached where they want to reach and that is adherents hasn’t been able to reaches some form of agreement in fundamental principles. He uses logic and mathematics as examples of scientific fields where they have gathered knowledge with the help of a priori knowledge. He says that to gain knowledge about nature we must first try to establish something about it before and then experiment to see if what is established is true. It’s a bad method to let the nature lead and to hope for accidental results. I think that Kant thinks metaphysics has used this method and he thinks that to turn it around and make the object conform to our cognition as an experiment. 

• At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

We say that we hear with our ears and that we see with our eyes. In the discussion Socrates and Theaetetus are trying to define what knowledge is and to do so Socrates says that he has to be more precise with the use of words and that we really see and hear through our eyes and ears and that the mind is using them to perceive our surroundings. Our mind interpreters what our organs sense, and then interpreting the information and reasoning about it is where we gain knowledge about our surroundings. And when I think about it you can’t know everything about an object by just look at it or just feeling it, you will need all your senses to interpret your surroundings and to know something about it.  

Socrates argument is similar to empiricism in the way that both takes a starting point in our sensory experiences and that both think that it is the source of knowledge. And that we can’t know if something is true if we don’t experience it ourself. And this is a complicated matter where I feel that the simple conclusion is that you can’t know something about what you haven’t experienced but after reading these text you start thinking about what we know and why we know it.