Theme 3: Research and theory - Preseminar

Computers in Human Behavior

A journal where the focus is aimed at understanding the correlation between psychology and computer interaction. How is a single individual, a group or a society affected mentally by this ever increasing usage of computers? The primary subject within this journal is human behaviour created by interaction with computers, not the computers themselves. The published works within are: Original theoretical works, research reports, literature reviews, software reviews, book reviews and announcements.

I do think this journal has a role in media technology - even though the technical aspects are undermined the information can still be of great use in further developing the design and interaction aspect.

Why people use social networking sites: An empirical study integrating network externalities and motivation theory

This paper is researching social networking sites (SNS), trying to figure out the crucial factors that contribute to members initially joining, continued use and why there is growth within the network. To categorize and explain these factors the author is using motivation theory and network externalities. Motivation theory is divided into extrinsic motivation (usefulness) and intrinsic motivation (enjoyment). Network externalities is a term that refers to (in this case) a user's contribution to the increased or decreased growth of the network through the value and effect that they themselves generate - both directly and indirectly.

So in short, the different factors that would determine why people join a network is: Usefulness, enjoyment, amount of peers (friends/family), amount of members and perceived complementarity (indirect network externalities). The method used to gain this knowledge was through an online survey (based on questions) in the Taiwan version of Facebook. The findings showed that the most influential factors was enjoyment, followed by number of peers and then usefulness. The survey further showed that there was a difference between genders: the male demographic was less influenced by the number of both peers and members in the network. Which means they were less likely to stop using the network if some of the members and/or their peers dropped out. The goal of the paper was to give a reference point to operators of SNS, modifying their priorities.

The fact that the subject group was mostly people from Taiwan has me wondering if the results might be biased because of differing cultures and/or lifestyles. I have yet to read an article about internal cultures of social networks but my assumption is that they remain unaffected from a secondary life.

Lastly when discussing the theoretical background of the subject it was easily understandable as the author explained the context by which the citations were used. Seldom were citations randomly placed to increase the “value” of the paper.

Questions

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

Quotes by Sutton & Staw are: “Data are not theory” and “Theory is the answer to queries of why”. As such theory can be used to explain observations in a logical way; it can be built/created upon data, references or diagrams - but empirically collected information in itself is not theory.

2. 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?

Two major theories are used to describe and explain the phenomena of joining social network sites are “Motivation theory” and “Network externalities” which both are described above in the summary. These theories are best suited to type II. “Explanation” because they are needed to formulate the questionnaire and are also used to clarify/simplify the main article’s subject.

The most fitting for the whole paper itself is theory type IV: “Explanation and Prediction” (EP), because the paper involves all the elements of “What is, how, why, when, where, and what will be.”.  It starts with something to aim for, predicts what will happen, shows the result and lastly explains and discusses said result.

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

The whole paper which is of the fourth type (EP) appear to me as a reader the most comprehensive with a structure as this. The other theories which are used to build a foundation for the the article make it easy to follow and understand because the theories use simple and few concepts. However, it might limit the scope of the article and make it a bit shallow, are the different categories too broad, limiting the facts that can be extracted from the paper?

References: 
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/computers-in-human-behavior/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563210003766