Journal
I chose the Journal Media, Culture & Society is according to their webpage a major peer-reviewed international forum for research in the field of sociology. They publish papers on media and communicational technologies from a political, cultural and economical perspective. It has been published since 1979 and you can find it in databases such as SCOPUS and Social Sciences Citation Index. The Journals impact factor is 1.092
I found a paper written by Maria Bakardjieva. The article I chose is this one:
I chose the Journal Media, Culture & Society is according to their webpage a major peer-reviewed international forum for research in the field of sociology. They publish papers on media and communicational technologies from a political, cultural and economical perspective. It has been published since 1979 and you can find it in databases such as SCOPUS and Social Sciences Citation Index. The Journals impact factor is 1.092
I found a paper written by Maria Bakardjieva. The article I chose is this one:
Bakardjieva, Maria.
(2003) Virtual togetherness: an everyday-life perspective. Media,
Culture & Society. SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 25:
291–313
In the article
Bakardjieva explores how online relationships and interaction effects everyday
life. The study is based on an ethnographic study of 21 Internet users
participating in online forums. Her main questions are:
- Why do users participate in these forums?
- What does it mean to them?
- How does it reflect on the public understanding of the
Internet?
From
her research she draws conclusions of Internet as a new communication
medium.
What
struck me when reading Bakardjiev's
paper was that already in the abstract she has three questions. I feel these
questions should be more connected and maybe she should chose a main focus to
keep a red thread through her paper. On the first page she also states:
"... by engaging in different forms of collective
practice online users
transcend the sphere of narrowly private interest and
experience. Why do
they do that? What does it mean to them? How does it
affect public
understanding of the Internet? The concept of ‘virtual
community’ has been
only of limited help in understanding of this practice
and I will try to
explain why in what follows."
This makes me even more
confused. What's the main question? It's easy to loose the reader already in
the abstract or first couple of pages if the main question isn't clear.
Questions1. Theory explains and describes things
around us for example Newton’s law of universal gravitation. Newton has a
hypothesis that the apple will fall to the ground and when he drops it does fall. But to be a
theory it needs to be general and not only apply to one apple. By observation
and experiments Newton can construct a theory. If what he
constructs not is logical and if he doesn't put the information into a
context it wouldn’t have been a theory. Since Newton explains how and why things are drawn to the ground if we drop them, it’s a theory.
2. Bakardijeva collects data about Internet usage from her 21 test persons. She analyses why, how, when and where they use the Internet and social forums to map how relationships are build through Internet. Therefor I believe she uses the second type of theory in Gregor’s Taxonomy; Explanation.
3. The theory explanation can only be used when a papers main question concerns a fairly new subject or an unknown. For example in the article I read, it was written in 2003 when Internet relationships were still very unexplored. If the theory is used correctly and with the right kind of subject it will provide a broad knowledge and understanding.
2. Bakardijeva collects data about Internet usage from her 21 test persons. She analyses why, how, when and where they use the Internet and social forums to map how relationships are build through Internet. Therefor I believe she uses the second type of theory in Gregor’s Taxonomy; Explanation.
3. The theory explanation can only be used when a papers main question concerns a fairly new subject or an unknown. For example in the article I read, it was written in 2003 when Internet relationships were still very unexplored. If the theory is used correctly and with the right kind of subject it will provide a broad knowledge and understanding.
I think that the quote you wrote in doesn't necessarily imply that those are questions that she wants to answer, but you could see them as factors that made her want to answer the main questions. On the other hand, a large question can often be broken down into smaller ones, there is a difference between these two things. It doesn't seem that the author clarified the situation, to your misfortune.
SvaraRaderaI agree with you, one of the weaknesses in this her text is that she doesn't explain and motivate her choices. I believe that the most important things when writing a paper like this is to think through your choices, motivate them well and criticize them. In my opinion, that is what separates an OK paper from a really good one. If this is achieved I believe the author has a greater knowledge of what he/she is examining.
SvaraRadera