Theme 3: Theme 3: Research and theory (Before Seminar)

Select a research journal that you believe is relevant for media technology research. The journal should be of high quality, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above. Write a short description of the journal and what kind of research it publishes. 

The Journal I chose it is called “Computers in Human Behavior”. The journal has an impact of 2.273, it is a scholarly journal where the main goal is to study and examine the use of computers from a psychological perspective. The journal aims to evaluate the human interactions with computers, but no computers. Main ideas of most articles are about human behavior. It is a web and per reviewed Journal.

Write a short summary of the paper and provide a critical examination of, for example, its aims, theoretical framing, research method, findings, analysis or implications.

 From this Journal I have selected the paper "Presentation on Facebook and risk of cyberbullying victimization". The study that this paper shows, has the intention of investigate whether specific self-presentation behaviors on Facebook were associated with cyberbullying victimization for adolescents.

 Today the development of multimedia technologies is very fast, despite being an advantage in society to transmit information between large distances, it has drawbacks. In this sense the use of social media networks is present in most cultures and every day there are more who join them, the misuse of social networking is very common especially for young people. One of the consequences of bad handling of social networks is the cyberbullying and the selected paper focuses on assessing what are the characteristics that make them more likely to be a young victim of this, concentrating particularly on Facebook.

 The research was based on questionnaires answered by study participants, which were a total of 316 participants from a university in Australia and two secondary schools in Melbourne. The study was done in a period of 6 months. The method used for this analysis was a logistic regression model. The study showed satisfactory results in terms of identifying features of Facebook that can promote cyberbullying victimization among users- However,  I believe that the number of objects of study is too small to generalize the results of this study in comparison to the number of Facebook users. I believe that the cultural factor is a key variable for better conclusion , the study only relied on participants from two different sites within the same culture, social factors should be taken into consideration. The same happens with the percentage of the genders, which involved in a greater percentage of female participants (81%), this may have been an important factor that influenced the results and it was not taking into consideration. 

   Despite this, the study showed that victims of cyberbullying have the ability and the potential to increases the risk of victimization through the use of various features of Facebook, such as the number of friends, wall update, updates profile photo and cover, among others. So it is important that this information be integrated into protection programs intended for that purpose.  

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

To define the word theory can be complex, however a good way to define it is the way we define Sutton and Staw, "Theory is the answers to queries of why". Thus,  a better way of understanding this definition is knowing what is not theory, as explained by those authors. What is often mistaken with theory is: data, list of variables, hypotheses and diagrams, which are actually tools that help to form a theory. Among the purposes of a theory are: description, analysis and prediction.

  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?

I think that article I chose, mainly uses a kind of theory of explanation, because it is focused on what it is, why, how and when is the situation under study. The study is based on the explanation but does not seek to predict with any kind of accurate results.

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

A theory of explanation gives you an easy understanding of the subject, but most of the time the explanation is based on specific circumstances and is very difficult to make a generalization of the problem. That is why as I said earlier, to me the findings of this study cannot be generalized for all young Facebook user without taking into account the cultural factor.