Theme 3: Research and Theory

DESCRIPTION OF COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

I chose a research journal Communication Research. It is one of the oldest bi-monthly journals. It is specialized in communication field.  As it is written on the Sage database, the journal publishes “researchers and practitioners with the most up-to-date, comprehensive and important research on communication and its related fields.” This journal has high scientific standards regarding the fact that impact factor is over 2.4

EXAMINATION OF PAPER: BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The article Civil Society and Online Political Discourse: The Network Structure of Unrestricted Discussions raises 5 questions and two hypotheses about interaction of civil society and online newsgroups. The purpose of this study is exploratory. The goal of this study: “to examine the free and unrestricted computer mediated social interactions” (Itai Himelboim, Civil Society and Online Political Discourse: The Network Structure of Unrestricted Discussions, 2011, p. 635). The research paper explains why the topic is chosen and its relevance.

RESEARCH

Qualitative and quantitative research methods are applied. Civil society and network-mediation are the main concepts in the research paper. These main concepts are respectively defined in terms of theoretical framework of civil society and network based conceptual framework. The frameworks are determined appropriately regarding to literature review and previous studies. The concepts are tied with each other since the core of analysis is civil engagement in the network, how these concepts correlate. 4 activity actors: in-degree, out-degree, in-replies, and out-replies are empirically measured in order to esteem interaction of mentioned concepts. The author fulfills the capacity to do a quantitative research and draw conclusions due to the fact that data are collected in 6 years’ period. In all, 375 messages are analyzed from 20 newsgroups. Despite the fact that there are sufficient data to draw conclusions, data are collected randomly. For instance, newsgroups are chosen according very abstract key words “philosophy” and “politics”. The author agrees that some of the analyzed messages are written in sport, hobby network groups. Quantitative data are adjusted according few methods: “Models for Skewed Count Distributions” and “Yule Distribution”. Variables and their correlations are defined in a clear way in terms of conducting quantitative research method. The second part of research is based on content analysis. However, particular methods or tools are not defined in the paper. It is not clear how and according what layers messages are examined. Therefore, it could be questioned how the conclusions of the messages’ content are made.

RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS

Conclusions are significant because the results deny literature review. Study points out concerns and correlations but do not examine causality. Implications for future sciences researches are made. For instance, lurkers who read but do not comment are not examined in the study. Also, it is advised to future researchers to analyze and compare the differences of the concrete political newsgroups, as mentioned before in this study cases were picked randomly according broad keywords.

WHAT WOULD I DO DIFFERENTLY?

Willing to do a solid content analysis I would choose the particular topic and how that political philosophical question would be covered in chosen few groups.  In that case, qualitative data would be more measurable and comparable. Also, it would prevent from getting data from no-related hobby or sport groups as it was included in this research.

WHAT THEORY IS, AND WHAT THEORY IS NOT

There is an ability to imply theory in practice.  It means that theory is based on empirical data and provides the method how to do empirically research and verify the data. It is necessary to be able to verify the theory. Theory consists of systematical analysis, explanation, prediction and prescription.  Theory is a confirmed testable hypothesis proved by the arguments. Theory enhances the level of knowledge and articulates practice in a disciplined way.  Theory explicates causality and implies techniques or principles. The scope of implication the theory should be clearly defined.

THE TYPES OF THEORIES

Research paper Civil Society and Online Political Discourse: The Network Structure of Unrestricted Discussions applies 2 main theories. One of the theory explained what civil society is. 6 concepts of civil society are pointed out. Another theory determines computer-mediated communication and how it interacts with civil engagement. Theory of social interaction on networks is based on few indicators (out-degree; in-degree; power-law) and its correlation. Both of these theories define civil society and mediated network discourse and explain correlation of variables but do not go deeper into prediction and causality. Therefore, the type of theory is Analysis in terms of S. Gregor definitions.

BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS OF THEORIES

Analyzing theory defines categories properly and these definitions are the basic for the future researches. In addition, analyzing theory is applied when there is not so much information about the discourse. In analyzing theory description plays an important part but there is always a risk to generalize phenomenon. Another drawback of this analyzing theory that researches are conducted in a superficial shallow perspective. Analyzing theory does not point out causality and outcomes.