Theme 6: Reflection

This week was about qualitative research methods and case studies, and we had to choose two different articles, each using one of these methods.

The article I chose conducting a qualitative research method only ended up using ten people in their study. I personally think that it has to be nearly impossible to get any conclusive or reliable results from such a small study. One can hardly make any generalization with that amount of research subjects, and how valid is the research then? I’ve learnt that this method perhaps isn’t suitable for certain types of research. If they want to study how a technical device/system is being used, it’s perhaps better suited to work with a more quantitative data gathering, and then perhaps finalizing it with qualitative methods. If, for an instance, one is designing a new system, I can see the real use of qualitative research when defining how the system should be designed and perhaps evaluating the product after designing.

The article conducting a case-study I thought carried out a much more suitable research method. They examined a case, used multiple ways to gather data, conflicted with the brought up literature, and in the end – according to me – got more conclusive results than the article mentioned above. I guess I’ve come to realize that case-studies can be really useful when you want to make a new hypothesis or defining a new theory, but it’s more or less something that usually needs to be completed with further research. It’s hard to make any “definite” generalizations outside the studied case, since the population or situation is (or should be) limited to just that case in question. But, in general, I learnt a lot about case-studies, and a lot from Eisenhardt's text. I had a very vague idea about what a case-study was, and now I really see the use of them, especially when it’s concerning new research areas.

Theme 6: Qualitative and Case Study Research

Mobile Geotagging: Reexamining Our Interactions with Urban Space

The first article I chose is called Mobile Geotagging: Reexamining Our Interactions with Urban Space, written by Lee Humphreys and Tony Liaowhich and was publish 2011 in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, which has an impact factor of 1.778. In this paper they focus on a mobile geotagging service called Socialight and how people interact with it in an urban environment. They do this by exploring Socialight’s ability to leave “Sticky” notes, where you tag a note of some sort of note to a specific geographical location, and later on you or another person can read it when being at that location.

• Research method

In this paper they contacted active Socialight users, and in the end got 10 active users with which they performed in-depth interviews. They asked the users question like how and why they use Socialight, what made them start using it, how they integrated it into their everyday lives, and so on. The authors also used the service themselves for two years to become familiarized with it. They used an iterative approach to the collection of data – they continuously collected and analyzed the data they obtained.

One weakness when doing it like this, which the authors pointed out as well, is that new mobile services like Socialight tend to change and sometimes switch focus, and when the study stretches over two years it might very well be something else than they started out with. Another weakness is that they could not make any generalizations, since they only had 10 subjects and those subjects couldn’t represent all the Socialight users, as well as also only Socialight users, not any other kinds of geotagging services. It is also harder to analyze this sort of data, since the interviews might differ so much, which in turn can lead to a lacking conclusion.

The tweets that killed a university: A case study investigating the use of traditional and social media in the closure of a state university

The second article had to be a case study, and I found the article The tweets that killed a university: A case study investigating the use of traditional and social media in the closure of a state university, written by Nicholas J. Kelling, Angela S. Kelling and John F. Lennon and was publish 2013 in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, which has an impact factor of 2.067. This article is a pretty straightforward case study, where they investigate the case where social media (mostly Twitter) led to the ultimate closure of a university.

• Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

A case study is, just as the name implies, a study of a certain case. The case can be a certain person, group, country, current or historical event or decision, pretty much anything that can be analyzed holistically. It can be one case or multiple, as long as they can be analyzed as a whole. Case studies are generally good in new research areas, for creating hypotheses and theories, and in some cases test and describe theories.

• Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

The article use multiple ways to collect data - a questionnaire sent out to students asking things like their media habits and their part in the closure of the university, and they also data-mined the different media and social media sources that were active during this event. According to Eisenhardt this can strengthen grounding of theory by triangulation of evidence.

It also has a specified population. It focuses on the students attending the university and the media covering the event at the time. This limits the unnecessary variation and sharpens the external validity.

The article starts by introducing different literature concerning e.g. how students get news, social media and campus communities, and how social media is utilized to document events, all of them containing their own theories. The result of this article was however unexpected. It conflicted with the previous literature, and indicated that students was not the ones utilizing social media in this case, it was mainly the media – the journalists and the politicians. According to Eisenhardt, when comparing with conflicting literature, the theory can be strengthened because it builds internal validity, raises theoretical level of the article, and sharpens concept definitions.

A weak point of the theory this article produce is of course that it only represents a certain population, which makes generalizations weaker. It is also mainly just a quantitative gathering of data – it doesn’t really combine with qualitative methods and therefore doesn’t go very deep into why these specific results were obtained.

Theme 5: Reflection

The theme this week was design research which I think is an interesting research method. It’s more in line with the kind of research I’m interested in, where you actually create something or at least propose the creation of a product or system.

However, we did not have any seminars this week. Instead we had two lectures, one held by Ylva Ferneaus and one held by Haibo Li. Both of the lecturers were also part in the writing of the two texts we read for this week’s theme - Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses and Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. Both of the texts were design oriented research, albeit not exactly the same type of design research. It was nevertheless interesting to see how design research can be approached in different ways and aimed at different outcomes.

I thought Haibo Li’s lecture brought up some interesting things that I believe that I, and perhaps many other students and researchers, often overlook. Especially the part about how we approach a problem caught my attention. Haibo Li mentioned that researchers can often be quite hasty when defining the problem, and then quickly move onto the solution. The difference between good and bad research can be the result of how you distribute the work over time and which parts that get the most focus. In general, Haibo Li thought that more time and effort should be put into the defining of the problem, which, after hearing it, sounds very logical to me. How can one solve a problem when every part of the problem isn’t yet revealed? And what if you start designing the solution, and notice that the problem is askew from the solution given by the design? I really think this is something I’ll think about when conducting research on my own, or just designing a product/system. Jumping into the designing right away could possibly make all the work ineffective or just downright not very good.

Theme 5: Design Research

This week we’re discussing design oriented research, i.e. research that proposes solutions in the form of designed systems and products. There were two articles provided for this theme, and the first one was Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses, which is written by Ylva Fernaeus and Mattias Jacobsson. This article propose a “[…] design of physical languages for controlling and programming robotic consumer products”, and it does this by exploring some basic semiotic theories that exist in comics and the world of fashion. The design is presented in the form of three examples; one where the robotic dinosaur Pleo acts differently by wearing different clothes; one example where the smaller GlowBots are provided with pins that define their movement and behavior; and one last example where an automated vacuum is provided with comic book-styled stickers that affects its behavior. The article does suggest technology that can be used to implement this, e.g. RFID in the items that tells the product which programming code to use, but the study does not put this into action itself.

Personally I was a bit disappointed that the study didn’t include actual implementation of the technology to make working prototypes, but I still think it’s quite an interesting and creative subject. If robots are becoming more and more common in our everyday life, perhaps it would be interesting to be able to interact with the robots in a less “controlling” way. When a robotic device lacks the normal forms of interaction, like screens or buttons, perhaps this kind of interaction can provide an effective way personalize the robots. I wonder though, in the time since this article was written, have there been any attempts to really implement this? And, since I figure this concept might entail things like additional work, more programming and processing power, larger expenses and so on, would this then really be a feasible concept for the more practical robots like the vacuum?

The other article to read was Turn Your Mobile into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration, written by Shafiq ur Réhman, Jiong Sun, Li Liu, and Haibo Li. While the last article was more of a suggestion and research for further research and implementation, this article takes a more hands-on approach and develops a product that is then tested and evaluated. The article is, as the title suggest, and attempt to render a live football game on your mobile phone using vibration. The main idea is the make the phone vibrate in different ways and in sync with important events that happen to the ball in the actual football field.

We were asked to reflect on a couple of questions after reading is article and I chose the following:

• What role will prototypes play in research?

Prototypes can play quite an important role in research, but it depends highly on the sort of research that is conducted. In the article Turn Your Mobile into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration they made a prototype with the needed features to be able to test the concept and without said prototype the study would’ve been quite hard to perform and evaluate. In general a prototype is an early stage of a product or a system and can be used to test new designs and hypotheses. It is also generally very interesting to create a prototype when one is conducting design oriented research.

• Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

In the early stages of a study it can be really useful to develop a proof-of-concept prototype, before you continue making the prototype on which the theory will be based. The proof-of-concept provides a way to test different features, before actual implementation, remove the features that doesn’t work and where new designs and/or development might be needed. It can reduce the cost and the time needed for the study and with an improved functional prototype it can improve the general results in the end.

Theme 4: Reflection

This week’s theme was Quantitative Research, which is actually a subject that I (and many of my classmates) have already brushed upon while writing for the bachelor degree and also during the course Media, Technology and Culture. For me this theme served more as a reminder of what quantitative methods are and why and to what cause they can be used. But, apart from for a reminder, this week’s theme also gave at least some deeper insight into quantitative methods, and perhaps mainly produced a sharper definition as to where the quantitative and qualitative methods differ from each other.

During Wednesday’s seminar we played “Boggle” - or at least a variation of it; instead of creating words we listed definitions of the two different research methods. I personally thought the seminar was a very constructive way of learning, and it really suited this kind of subject. Discussions were raised and we had a knowledgeable judge to end them. The only troublesome part, according to me, is that competitiveness can cause bickering and excessively prolong the discussions.

Just like last week’s theme we chose an article for this theme, with the exception that the main criteria of this chosen article was that it had make use of quantitative methods in its research. The article I ended up choosing used pretty much the same research method as the article we were supplied with. Both of them used surveys (both with a rather substantial amount of test subjects) to draw data upon and then predicted and generalized to makes some conclusions from their research. In the end the conclusion are therefore only predictions and generalizations, and they never explain why and how the conclusions really came to be, only that they do. If there’s something this course has taught me, it is that research will never be exact or definite. Perhaps one can evolve a study that’s using quantitative research methods, by the use of qualitative methods (or vice versa or even further use of the same method), and provide deeper insights and therefore further defining the theory. But, however far one evolves the theory, it will not provide a definite truth. So what then is the point of research? Well, perhaps one could accept that the definite truth may not be within human grasp, and hope that the research at least touches parts of the truth and is still beneficial.

Theme 4: Quantitative Research

I chose the article Making sense of multitasking: The role of Facebook, by Terry Judd (2013) and it was published in the journal Computers & Education with an Impact Factor of 2.775. The article investigates the impact Facebook has on university students’ general behavior when it comes to multitasking and focused behavior. They hypothesize that Facebook is associated with an increased occurrence of multitasking, that it initiates and maintains multitasking behavior, and that Facebook users are generally more likely to multitask.

The quantitative methods of Making sense of multitasking: The role of Facebook

I believe the article make use of pretty much straightforward quantitative methods for its study. The study takes place at an Australian university where it collects detailed data-logs of students’ computer-based activities in an open-access computer laboratory. They then separate the different activities performed, give them task names (i.e. Facebook, Google search, Microsoft Word, etc.) and count how many tasks were performed at the same time and how often the subject was switching task, during a session and during segments with specific time intervals. Depending on the count, the study defines the session as focused, sequential or multitasking. Over all the study makes use of 3372 collected sessions from 1249 different students.

Since the study did use a fairly large group of people and many recorded many sessions that were quite accurate, it could obtain solid results, where the evidence supporting the three hypotheses in general was reasonably strong. The method is efficient – data was collected rather smoothly and results were easily processed and gave clear results.

There are however limitations to the method. The results only represent the data collected from students at a certain university, in a certain country, during a certain time, etc. The study does not represent the whole world, or even every computer/Facebook user. There is also no exact definition as to what is considered to be multitasking, which in a sense makes the results vague. This type of method is also making predictions – it does not explain why or how Facebook would induce multitasking, it only suggests that it does. Perhaps with the use of more intricate interviews with the subjects, or another form of qualitative data gathering, the study could render a deeper understanding of the subject.

The quantitative methods of Physical activity, stress, and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship that exists between physical activity, stress and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). The study examines this relationship by Web-based questionnaires to assess disease status, general lifestyle, physical activity and perceived levels of stress of 1509 Swedish men and women that had reported URTI. The conclusions they could make from the study was that high levels of physical activity might reduce the risk of URTI, and that highly stressed people may benefit even more from the physical activity.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

As mentioned above, when analyzing the method of the previous paper (which is somewhat similar in its methods), quantitative methods can be very efficient when gathering data, analyzing it and processing the results. In general the quantitative methods offer a way to gather and process a larger quantity of data. However, the data gathered will not necessarily provide significantly deep insights into how and why a phenomenon occurs. The quantitative methods are generally used in the social sciences, and generally make use of statistics.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

As opposed to the quantitative methods, the qualitative methods will provide deeper insight – they examine how and why the phenomena occur. The quantitative methods can consist of interviews, historical research and such. It can also provide an understanding of the conclusions made by the quantitative methods.

Qualitative research is however limited in the sense that it might be harder to analyze the data, detect the necessary patterns or extrude the significance for the study in question. When using qualitative methods it is also generally harder to obtain large amounts of data. The method might, for instance, be more time-consuming, harder to preform or harder to generalize to fit the circumstances.

Theme 3: Reflections

This week our task was to select a journal (with a reasonably high Impact Factor) and an article in that journal, which we considered to be relevant to the media technology field. I therefore chose an article concerning effects Internet advertisement has on people (see the post below), which I considered to be interesting for different reasons; firstly, it is dealing with a subject that influence us both as media technology students and as Internet consumers; and secondly, it could also show what kind of impacts even short exposure from commercials has on the mind, and from there it isn’t hard to continue speculating what kind of power this provides to the mass media.

Our task during the seminar involved defining and discussing of what sort of theory our article consisted, using the five different kinds of theory we learnt of in Gregor’s article The Nature of Theory in Information Systems. I first defined my own article as explanatory, as I considered it to be an attempt to explain the world in a sense. But after the seminar I got a deeper insight in the different kinds of theories, and had to change my choice to the theory of the article as being predictive. The article I had chosen make use of quantitative methods in its research, and consequently get results in which they can compare and predict a connection between the two phenomena. However, because of the lack of more qualitative and investigating methods, they do not exactly explain why or how the connection is there. I can therefore exclude the explanatory part of the theory and define it as being mostly predictive.

The other task during the seminar was choosing a theory from our articles, after we defined what kind it was, and put it in the course’s “theory-wiki”. We chose the theory from my article, mainly because it was the easiest to define by using Gregor’s theory of theories. In conclusion the theory became something like: “Short exposure of advertisement at low-level attention could have long-term effects on the implicit memory”.

In general this seminar was very useful to me; it incited a much stronger grasp on theory, what theory is and what kind of theories can be used. I think it will be very useful later on, when I have to make my own contributions to science and research. 

Theme 3: Research and Theory

Journal:

I chose the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1083-6101), which is mainly about the social sciences with a focus on media technology and communication with computers and the internet. It has an Impact Factor of 1.778 (and a five year impact factor of 4.748).

Article:

I chose the article: The Long-Term Effects of E-Advertising: The Influence of Internet Pop-ups Viewed at a Low Level of Attention in Implicit Memory (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12035/abstract), which was published in the journal mentioned above on October 7^th, 2013. I chose it because of the last week’s theme and the discussion of mass deception. This article shows the effects of commercials and advertising on a large media platform, and therefore touches the subject of manipulation and deception through media.

The main focus of the article is to explore the effects of repeated brief exposure from Internet commercials, i.e. pop-ups, and what kind of impacts they have on a test subject 7 days after exposure and 3 months after exposure. Firstly they go through the theoretical framework of the subject, how and why we react to short exposures of words and pictures. Then they explain their methodology, how they’re conducting their experiments, and also their own hypotheses. Lastly they conclude their results of the experiment in a discussion and a conclusion where they point out that short-term, low attention exposure can have long-term effects.

In general I thought their research to be pretty concise and to the point. They linked their background and theory, which I considered to be relevant and logical, to the construction of methodology, and could draw somewhat conclusive results from their experiments.

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

Theory is something that has been widely discussed throughout time and many have tried to put a real definition to the word. But since the subjects in which theories can be made differ so much, definitions of the word become elusive. But, to simplify, a theory is something observed, a way to describe, explain or help to understand a phenomenon. In Stutton and Staw’s paper, What Theory is Not, they explain theory as not being the actual data, references, hypotheses, variables or diagrams, but it is something that can (and perhaps should) make use of these.

• 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?

The article I chose I’d say is mainly the second type of theory described in Gregor’s text: Explanatory. It takes an existing phenomenon, describes it and tests the effects of it, to try to explain why and what kind of effects the phenomenon actually has. It does have some influences of the third type of theory: Prediction, in the sense that it provides some suggestions for further research, and that those predictions are more speculative than actually based on research.

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

The benefits of choosing the explanatory theory is that it provides a way of understanding and showing others the world as it is from a certain point of view. As it is mention in Gregor’s text: it can be label as a theory for understanding.

This type of theory should however not be used to make deterministic prediction. One has to be aware that these kinds of theories often include a high level of generalization, which can also be seen in the article I chose. They couldn’t test every individual exposed to Internet commercials, every type of commercial, within every time range one is exposed/not exposed to the commercial, and so on. They had to generalize to make any conclusions at all, which means that here is always has to be a certain level of probability, causality and consistency taken into account when viewing the conclusions.

Theme 2: Reflections

For this week’s theme we read and discussed parts of the book by Adorno och Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). I generally thought the concept of the book to be quite hard to entirely grasp, partially because I’m not particularly used to the language they use and also partially because there were so many examples from old literature that I sometimes had a hard time putting in context with the theme.

But, as opposed to last week, we did have a seminar this time, and this seminar really brought some clarity to the subject. It was really useful to hear my classmates’ interpretations and thoughts about the book. We spoke mostly about chapter 4: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, how the culture industry affects us even today, comparing mass media now and mass media back when the book was written. We discussed how there are very few big actors producing the content one is exposed to through mass media, and how easily they can manipulate and affect the consumers. I think we also had some really interesting discussions about art - what can be considered as art and how it relates to mass media and the culture industry. Adorno and Horkheimer had a very strict definition of what they considered to be art, and they saw the emerging mass media as the imminent death of art. Discussing the subject of art in relation to mass media really opened up a critical view of Adorno and Horkheimer’s text. They were very one sided and did not take every angle of mass media in consideration – only the ones that supported their point of view, and those were only the negative points. I deem that to be a bit “non-scientific”. How can we view their point of view as truthful if they only give us parts of the truth? And I also find it odd that Adorno, who we learnt to be a quite talented musician, did not consider how the mass media could help to spread art, as opposed to merely destroying it. 

Theme 2: Critical Media Studies

• What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment is an attempt to remove mythology and religion as a way of explaining the world, and rather focus on science and “real truths”. It is supposed to incite a mastery over nature through knowledge and dispel the fear of that which is unknown.

But according to to Adorno and Horkheimer the Enlightenment is in its essence itself a myth. For most people science is just something we are told to believe in by people that actually do the science. Science isn’t necessarily true, and science still doesn’t explain every part of the world to us. Therefore science itself can be considered to be a myth which makes the Enlightenment a myth.

• What is the meaning and function of “myth” in Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument?

Myth is a thing which the Enlightenment strives to remove, as said above. A myth is an attempt, just as the Enlightenment, to explain the world, but the myth instead makes use of deception to explain, it does not speak of the real truths or use definite knowledge.

But, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, the myths which the Enlightenment sought to remove were actually themselves products of the Enlightenment. The function of a myth is to report, to name, to tell of origins, and it does this by the means of narrating, recording and explaining, and therefore the goals doesn’t differ much from the Enlightenments. The real difference lies in that the magic and the spirits and the demons have been replaced but what science deems to be facts, rituals become experiments.

• What are the “old” and “new” media that are discussed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment?

I cannot find if Adorno and Horkheimer actually mention anything being specifically “old” or “new” media, but my interpretation is that the authors imply a difference in the way that the media is being used. Radio and TV (which was literally new back then) can be consider new media and I believe Adorno and Horkgeimer imply they strive for mass production, quantity and standardization, where there is a smaller consideration to whether or not the material produced is good as long as it reaches out to a big crowd. Older media had a focus on quality, it was the creation of art, and it could not be mass produced in the same way.  

• What is meant by “culture industry”? What is the relationship between mass media and “mass deception”, according to Adorno and Horkheimer?

 With the “new” media’s mass production of material, the production of culture becomes more of an industry. The focus turns to commercialism and the reaching a wide public, and it is controlled only by a few individuals. Adorno and Horkheimer comment on the problems that lie therein. The mass media could easily be used to manipulate the consumers. The people running the industry can themselves decide what culture should be, and culture can therefore also be altered to fit the standardization that comes with mass production, which in turn allows for an even greater spread of media and an even greater control over it. The consequences may be that culture suffers, becomes simplified and even dumbed down.

There is a pretty simple connection between mass media and mass deception. The former can be used to create the latter, as stated above. When there is a mass production of media and the media reaches the wide public, the producers gain a great power when deciding what kind of culture and which influences the general population should be exposed to.

• Please identify one or two concepts/terms that you find particularly interesting. Motivate your choice.

Personally I think it could be very interesting to view the concepts of culture industry and mass media, that Adorno and Horkheimer presented, but in our day and age. Today the mass media is even more widespread and information move even faster, but one big difference might be that the sources of information can be practically anyone. Today anyone can spread their art – in whatever form it might come - globally by just the push of a button. The big question then may be: have we moved even further away from “old” media and managed to mass produce even art, or have the mass media perhaps advanced and transformed into a place where the “old” media can be a part of the new?

Theme 1: Reflection

So, this week's seminar was cancelled, which makes reflection over it a bit harder (I would guess). But I thought that the theme was generally quite interesting, especially since it touches things I've been thinking about myself from time to time; what is real truth?; are there really any real truths? I do some painting and drawing, and as you develop that that skill you gradually learn that to create something realistic you need to see things for what they actually are. Colors are light and reflection, or the lack thereof. Proportions are just the angle of observation. Simply put, objects do not appear as the symbols we interpret or have learnt them to be. Sense-data gave me a name to the difference between the minds sensing of an object and the actual physical object. And from sense-data it's not a big leap to be thinking about what the actual truth of an object is. Are there really physical objects or just interpretation of them? And when speaking about descriptions passed between people, whether or not the people have acquaintance to the object, can there really be a description that really represents a physical object since every mind interprets it differently. And if every mind that has sensed an object has their own interpretation of it, one could consider the object to actually be multiple objects existing in the minds of different observers. Is the world as every person sense it therefore a world on its own? Does every mind contain their own dimension? Is every man actually his own island?

It would've been interesting to have the actual seminar so that people could have shared their own thought about this subject. Just reading the blog posts with the answers to the questions did not really reflect on what people were thinking themselves, and the seminar probably would've offered a greater insight. It also feels as though I missed a lot of the texts, since I didn't have time to read them all.

Theme 1: Theory of science

• What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

All objects that we perceive to exist in our world can be perceived in numerous different ways. An objects color, size, proportions and constraints may differ from mind to mind and also differ depending on what kind of light that's illuminating the object, from which angle and which distance the individual is watching it. The touch of an object isn't the same when touched with different body parts. The noise an object makes isn't necessarily the same from every point of the object. Russell introduce the term sense-data as a way to describe this momentary sensation of an object, and he uses it to differentiate between how different minds perceive an object under certain circumstances and the actual physical object itself and if the object actually exists. The sense-data isn't the physical object and you can't say it is actual attributes of the physical object, it is merely how it is perceived, the immediate experience that can differ in so many ways.

• What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?

A proposition is the description, the explanation, of an object. You can make propositions to describe an object, and there a many ways in which a description can be made. When describing, say a historical person, one cannot actually view the person and obtain sense-data, so one has to rely on propositions made about the person. The propositions does not necessarily have to be true, and they depend heavily on the individual uttering the proposition and that individuals acquaintance to the object in question. A statement of fact is however a description where you make a stand on whether or not a fact is true. Russell means that a statement of fact is something holds a higher value of the truth than the proposition does, and it is based on facts that can eliminate other descriptions of the object.

I interpret that propositions and statements of facts differ from other verbal expressions in the sense that they are descriptions based on acquaintances, the experiences of things.

• In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

Russell talks about both definite descriptions and ambiguous descriptions. The ambiguous description would be a description that could imply a large number things, while the definite description would only refer to one certain object. As an example Russel use the ambiguous description: "a man", which could refer to any number of different men, and he uses the definite description "the man with the iron mask", which only refer to one special man, one object. The definite description is what is 'known by description' - it is the description of what is known of a physical object by the experienced sense-data of it.

• In chapter 13 ("Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion") and in chapter 14 ("The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge") Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

Russell doesn't accept that true belief is the same as knowledge. There are premises that can be true, but still not lead to actual knowledge, as with the example Russel makes: "All Greeks are men; Socrates was a man". The premise is true, since Socrates was a Greek and a man, but it's a fallacious process of reasoning. Russell makes the point that all the knowledge we have of truths always contains a certain degree of doubt. Therefore one can question if there can really be any true knowledge of any kind, but merely a belief of true knowledge.