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.