Reflection 3: Research and theory

This week theme was, Theory of science, so the main focus was on theory. What is theory? What is not theory? It was very hard to define what it is, and in many cases it is easier to define what theory is not. When we examined the text “What is theory”, we focused more on what theory is not, rather then what it was.

We read different articles from different journals and discussed them in the seminar groups. It was interesting to see that everyone had different articles but the majority hade similar journals. But no one had the same journal as me, which I felt was a little bit unfortunate because I really wanted to discuss the journal. But the good part was that, we picked the journal and article that I had chosen, to present in the bigger group. The journal was "Computer in human Behavior" and the article was “Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness, narcissism, loneliness and Facebook usage” written by Tracii Ryan and Sophia Xenos. 

Besides choosing an article, we also needed to examine what kind of theory that was used in the paper. This was discussed in the second seminar, where everyone explained which theory was used in their paper.

This big challenge of this week was for me to find an accurate journal and an article that was related to media technology and had an impact factor of 1.0 or above. I also wanted it to be something that I was interested in. After hours of searching I finally found something that filled the criteria.

This week theme was so far the most giving in the sense of future studies. It made me think about theory in a new perspective. I feel like I got a deeper understanding on what it is and how it can be used.