Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is, and what theory is not.
To give “theory” a definition is a bit tricky. This quote from Sutton and Staw says it rather good: “Though there is conflict about what theory is and should be, there is more consensus about what theory is not”. So what is theory not? Sutton and Staw mentions several things that theory is not. Some are trivial while others are not.
According to Cambridge University’s dictionary the definition of theory is: “a formal statement of the rules on which a subject of study is based or of ideas that are suggested to explain a fact or event or, more generally, an opinion or explanation”. (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/theory?q=Theory)
An explanation from Sutton and Staw text that is referred to Kaplan and Merton is the following: theory is the answer to queries of why. This might be a bit vague and wide and can work for any question there is and a question itself doesn’t have to be a theory of course. Therefor a much better quote from the same text is: Theory is about the connections among phenomena, a story about why acts, events, structure, and thoughts occur. Theory emphasizes the nature of causal relationships, identifying what comes first as well as the timing of such events (Sutton and Staw). So it’s not only a question but it must also relate to a phenomenon or an event of some sort.
Write a short description of the journal and what kind of research it publishes.
I have chosen The Journal of Communication which is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes articles and book reviews on a broad range of issues in communication theory and research (Wikipedia). From this journal I have chosen the following article: What Is Second Screening? Exploring Motivations of Second Screen Use and Its Effect on Online Political Participation.
Write a short summary of the paper and provide a critical examination of, for example, its aims, theoretical framing, research method, findings, analysis or implications.
The paper is about the topic second screens and investigates what effects the use second screens has in terms online political participation. The term second screen means that while a person is consuming media through a TV, he/she is receiving additional content through a smaller handheld screen (laptop, phone etc).
The authors of the chosen paper aim to show political outcomes of media by examining news media consumption, second screening and online political action. They have a hypothesis that second screening influences certain behaviours.
Their chosen method for the research is to use a national two-wave panel data. The chosen people were selected from a group who registered to participate in an online panel. According to an external source their number of participants that respondent falls within acceptable parameters for web-based surveys. With this survey data, they perform statistical analysis to determine whether their hypotheses can still be valid or have to be discarded. The authors also compare the demographics of the responders with the U.S population and mentions what minorities differ from the U.S population. I believe that the reason for this is that the authors wants to make conclusions based on the entire american population. The authors claim however that the differences in terms of demographics is within a standard.
The results are backed up with a lot of statistics and everything is statistically analyzed. The authors also compare their results with their hypothesis for them to see whether they were on the right track before conducting the survey.
In order to make conclusions the authors combine the literary study with their results. They claim that second screening is motivated by information seeking and discussion and that users with a second screen in political context get more engaged in the debate. Their main points are rather clear.
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 major theory in my selected paper is that how people use media (in this case second screen) that produces positive effects (in this case more information and discussion). According to the theory second screening provides users an opportunity to get more information, discuss, and elaborate on TV news which creates a path from TV news consumption to online political participation. Based on this I would say that the theory type falls on explanation which means that the theory what is, how, why, when and where. The author explains what second screen is, why and how it produces positive effects.
Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?
The limitation is that is doesn’t give any prediction or testable propositions. The benefit of the theory is that is gives a clear explanation by answering how and why and the reader can make their own future predictions and applications, which is also a limitations since the reader can make wrong predictions.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Communication
GREGOR S. 2006. The Nature of Theory in Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 30(3), 611-642.
SUTTON R I & STAW B M. 1995. What Theory is Not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 371-384
ZUNIGA H et al. 2015 What is Second Screening? Exploring Motivations of Second Screen Use and its Effect on Online Political Participation,
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