Theme 4: Quantitative research (Reflection)

It is time to sum up this theme and what I have learned during this week’s work. In general, I feel that I have got a chance to practise outlining and analysing scientific methods that are relevant for media technology research. Also, I have identified methodological problems in research studies.

I have thought a little bit more about the method ‘quantitative content analysis’ used on blogs, as so was the case in my chosen research paper (see the blog post before this one, for a reminder). Content analysis is a method that makes it possible to compress a lot of textual information and systematically identify their properties, and compressing a lot of words into fewer content categories. When analysing linguistics the results happens to depend a lot on the decoder’s interpretation. The blogosphere is filled with texts characterized of a high ‘personal touch’ and sometimes also a lot of irony. These factors can be seen as disruption in the communication and be problematic to analyse in a content analysis. Most likely it will affect the analysis in some direction and therefore also oppose basic validation of the coding scheme. Another thing I was wondering about is the fact that the blog has become a platform where to present oneself in the best light, without being required to tell the whole truth. That makes me questioning the reliability of using the blogosphere as primary research area.

I have also thought about how to measure feelings, as these are highly individual and experienced differently from person to person. I understand why one must generalize and simplify by categorizing. If not, it would be almost impossible to come up with a conclusion that ties the research together and makes it interesting. The way I see it, a study is always affected, either by the researchers or the participants, as none of these are unconcerned people. Therefore, feelings and experiences always affect the result in some way. Additionally, the environment where the experiment or study is carried out may also affect the result. Let’s say that the respondent does not feel comfortable in the specific environment, as it reminds him or her of unpleasant memories. Then the participant most likely would not react as he or she normally would have done if so was not the case. Finally, I want to put focus on another limitation of quantitative methods, namely when to answer the question "why" something is in a specific way. Instead quantitative methods are appropriate and effective when to proven right or wrong. All these mentioned aspects are things that I will carefully think of when I will conduct a research in future.