Comments

Theme 1: Pre reflection (Lucy)
I like the way you put things.
"Russell argues that real or true knowledge is extremely hard to identify (if not impossible?) since people's knowledge is based on sense-data, which varies from individual to individual"
Who is to say that a crazy person's view is not a real view more less THE real view of how things go down. It is quite impossible to establish a "true reality" as reality as it seems is limited to the dimensions of each individual.
 Moreover- what makes a "crazy person" a crazy person? Where's the threshold of insanity and who defines it..?

Theme 1: (Jenny Silen)
I was not entirely sure of what question number 3 was about until I read your blog- post:
"When Adorno and Horkheimer talks about the by the new media, a concept they are highly critical of,  what they refer to seems to be the mass production of cultural material, such as soap operas, cartoons and stunt movies etc.  It is the easy consumption of popular culture on TV, radio and movie theatres that creates passive and stupid consumers (people)".

Thank you! It seems all these points and questions and answers overlap and cross over each other. I was also intrigued by your comment:
 "I cannot help but wonder if this would be the case also today; is the branding value so important that you need to keep advertising your products even though you cannot produce them, and people cannot buy them."

I recently saw an advertisement in the subway that pretty much stated that: "in the US customer service comes in place 1, in Sweden customer service comes in at place 55". They go on encouraging people to not just try to blindly strive for a cheaper price. When a company promises too much of what they can't deliver, weather it be prices below their own threshold of income or production they quickly turn over and are bankrupted. One fine example is OnOff. In a state where prices are pushed, quality (in variety) and customer service suffers the most. So then the queation remains: are we here to satisfy robotic and static, temporary needs. and is that sufficient? Or should we concentrate on the fact that we communicate with human beings- entities with limitations and specific needs, trying to limit our production to actually fit the end consumer?

Theme 2: Pre reflection (Anna Tjörnebro)

Interesting that you brought out Cosmo and Elle and the Russel theories about "what's real" as that could certainly be a relevant question at hand..
I would also like to fill in that today we're part of the group feeding mass deception to ourselves. We thrive on the simplified ideas of a less advanced world, and as we have opinions of our own we feed them to the mass deception- blob, that in term tells us what our opinions are. It's like a neverending paradox and yet it makes sense...
Somehow I can't help but feel like we reach fr a myth (because just as you wrote- we're not ready to take responsibility for ourselves and so we push the responsibility of the explanations on something else- like a myth). Isn't mass deception a myth? And if so and we still live the mass-deception myth- what does that make us..?

Theme 3 pre reflection: (Iuliia Zabavina)
It's an interesting article you've chosen. Did you know that links between on human beings' physical age and social capital has been established? Basically- the more social capital your environment has, the longer you live.
Social capital is based on things you do together, like talkoo- work. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talkoo#Talkoot). Small villages might have more social capital than larger communities- but it has still nothing to do with a community. For instance, being a member of church is not social capital. Social capital refers not to "us and them" but rather "we and we". So the question "do you trust people around you?" may be tiny as a sentence, but remarkably significant.

Your take on theory seems so much more logical than mine. Thank you.

Theme 3 pre reflection:(christoffer carlsson)
Your layout for the different kinds of theories are very clear. I've been wondering myself how to implement everything into a paper.. As you commented on the article of you chose:
"the lack of analysis is a limitation to this theory. I would like to see some data or facts regarding the change over time (yearly) in number of patients treated at the unit, the number of patients surviving and not at least the change of the actual noise level at the unit."
I also found the same thing in the article I chose. The thing is, however, that if one starts on a new research topic and can't refer to past research, there is no way one can make just conclusions to one's hypotheses... and so the "perfect plan for a fully -ok article" can only be "standing on the shoulders of giants".

In several research papers I also found that an analysis or summing of what the authors found or concluded was missing- as if they wanted to distance themselves from claiming any responsibility to their work.

Theme3 re reflection: (oscar friberg)
Interesting topic. As you day, there' s no way you could define the political outcome of the usage of Twitter. However, if one monitors the link between this usage and political popularity one can establish findings that the reader may interpret freely.
Not so long ago BBC published a documentary on the link between ruling governments and the price of onions in India- and how the price of onions seemed to directly correlate to how people found their government.

Theme 3 pre reflection: (Zahra Al Houaidy)
It's interesting how he manages to summarize the data he's collected and dared to make a hypothesis or at least a vague theory. In many articles it's the other way around- data is collected, presented and yet no conclusions are drawn... possibly for fear of being proven wrong. It's a hard topic and a large one. I can see that it has to be very hard to come to any conclusion at all.

Theme 3 post reflection: (Zahra Al Houaidy)
The comment:
"any finding is only data and it only becomes part of a theory if there is reasoning of why." is interesting when writing about our next topic in Theme 4: Quantitative research. This distinguishes quite clearly the difference between quantitative and qualitative research (even benefits and drawbacks of both).
I've also found that the conclusions in several papers are, in fact, inconclusive, as the authors don't seem to take any responsibility for their study in fear of being wrong.

Theme 3 post reflection: (Cem Atilgan)
I agree with you on that the clarification on what theory is and how searching for theory methods when analyzing an article became MUCH more understandable after discussing it in the seminar group and trying to match theories to a specific article.
I kept subconsciously thinking about a new term for the theory method we came up with in our group- all day...what DO you call a theory method that puts people in a strange environment with strange tools and watch them slowly learn how to cope with the tools they are given based on only their own intuition..? Late that night I came up with "Theory of cognitive sensory intuition"... (theory of cognitive intuition= why we know something without knowing it, just based on intuition and instinct)
I now have a headache :D

Theme 4: (Zahra Al Houaidy)
They focused on the issue of computer usage as a possible contributing factor to glaucoma. However, there are lots of other factors that weigh heavier, such as genes, physical traumas and/or other diseases (caused by lack of education or lifestyle habits). They did not, as it seems, really take into consideration who compromises their health as to how much they use computers. For instance, one factor they mention as a failure was the fact that many of the heaviest computer users were, in fact, computer engineers, with high education and somewhat good standard of living. Furthermore they mention that they only asked people at two separate companies where they assumed computer usage was residing. They wrote "next time we'll focus more on completely random people with computer skills". They found out, though, that about 5,5% of heavy users that were male had tendencies for refraction errors or glaucoma. No women! :D

Theme 4: (Aikaterini Kourti)
Drawing a " map" of an article's structure in an old-school "mind-mapping" way turned out to clarify yet some perspectives that I had not considered before. Establishing links between hypotheses, outcomes and results and marking the paths with possible theories strips an article of all the plus-minus BS that one so often can find in a text, and states how valid and stable the summing of a study is (not in all cases, naturally).
Your text was so clear and such a model-example for the seminar. I didnät get all of it at the seminar, but the more I come back to it now the more clear it gets.

Theme 5: (Mimmi Abrahamsson)
I guess there hasn't been that much on the robotics-for-consumers in the commercial field, but there have been a number of studies on this in medical science for example. Since they measure human response to roborics, it's also been a topic that's caught the interest of psychology studies.
Placing it on the market for consumption is a brilliant (and yet horrifying) idea, and I'm sure we'll hear more about it in the near future, as more companies with large budgets are looking to increase their income.

Theme 5: (on comments on my own blog)
Sorry, guys, not checking comments until now.
I believe you misunderstand me, I mean to say that the "expected result may be a failure". Not the result in itself. One might find results that open doors to further examination that in the beginning wasn't even considered.
This is why I'm more up for qualitative research (and apparently design research as well)- I don't like to go in to prove a point. I relish the challenge of getting results that you didn't expect (or the significance of a result you weren't concentrated on).
If one goes in with quantitative research methods, knowing what answers you're looking for, not getting those answers at all might make the survey fall apart. Then you have to start all over and try to analyze (as you do in qualitative research) new things to look for.

Theme 6: Edvard Ahlsén
Lot's of what you describe I also found in my paper. I often find that the summing at the end is actually inconclusive though at first glance it seems that the hypotheses and conclusions seemed somewhat controlled. After dissecting a paper and critically reviewing it, as you have, one finds the shortcomings of the research. I have a sneaky suspicion that this is a growing phenomenon.