Theme 4: pre-reflection

I was looking for an article in the Journal of Communications, since my last read from that journal proved so interesting. I found a promising candidate in ”Cynics all around? The impact of Election News on Political Cynicism in Comparative Perspective.” (”N=48,872? That seems like a serious quantity. Let’s have a read.”)

The paper investigates the impact of strategy framing in campaign news on levels of political cynicism. Strategy framing is described as news-stories focusing more on the game characteristics of an ongoing political campaign than the substantive issues. For instance, using metaphors from sports, games or war, to explain the actions of parties or candidates in terms of them trying to advance their position or increase their chances of gaining influence, rather than reporting on the actual political issues being discussed.

Using a very large sample size, the study spanned across 21 different EU countries at the time of the EP election in 2009. The method employed was “a multimethod research design including a content analysis and a two-wave panel survey was employed, first, to investigate how the news media in the different EU member states have covered the campaign, and second, to assess the impact of such coverage on the decision of voters to turn out to vote.”

The first part of that multimethod is the content analysis. In that they used a large sample of news stories from all the 21 countries involved (N=48,872) and coded them based on strategic framing. The second part was a two-wave survey, conducted three weeks before and immediately after the election day in respective country.

The authors’ discussion about their data and methods is exhaustive and not very well suited for summary here, but after having read through it and been prompted to revisit the locked compartment in my mind dedicated to mathematical statistic I have substantial confidence in the dependability of the study’s results.

One thing worth commenting on is how the data collected in the surveys as well as the data coded in the content analysis is very much qualitative data, but it is then used in a quantitative way; that makes it important to keep in mind what can be said and what can’t be said about the results. When working with qualitative data in that way, you can use quantitative methods for analyzing trends, but you have to keep in mind that the data-points cannot be considered equidistant. For instance the 7-grade scales the survey participants are asked to rate their agreement with certain propositions on; the data is qualitative, and as such, the scale is in some way arbitrary.

The other paper, Bälter et. al., also shows a very high degree of methodological awareness. It’s interesting to read a paper like this, because a high degree of intellectual honesty shows though in the discussion about what the data could be said to implicate.

What I’ve been thinking mostly about after this weeks reading is how to think about qualitative and quantitative both in terms of methods and in terms of data, and how the two can easily be confused. Also how the two types of methods do a good job of complementing each other, provided you have a good understanding of how they work.

Quantitative methods enable the use of a much larger sample size, because the interesting variables are quantified and easily handled when you compare them to the variables looked at in a qualitative study. In a qualitative method, the focus lies on interpretation which means you may not even know about all the variables you are interested in going into the study.

Theme 3: post-reflection

Theory is exciting. I like reading about theory. Trying to define theory feels very much like an excercise in generalizing previously made generalizations further and further, feeling with each iteration like you managed to include yet another facet of the concept in your definition-dough.

During the week I was inspired to, once again, revisit old course literature in philosophy of science and read about the hypothetical-deductive method and epistemology. I feel like I’ve gained some new perspectives from which to look at theory. For instance the idea of every theory bein born a hypothesis that then eventually matures into theoryhood by the process of deducing consequences from the child and then confirming every one in turn. 

Also, the ontological bit is tricky. My understanding is that theory has to identify objects before it can stipulate och describe any sort of (causal or other) relationship between them. This is either done by the theory itself, by referring to other theories or by implicit, not mentioned, help-hypotheses. To think about how a specific theory treats the objects of it’s claims is something that I’ve done (and probably most of my peers as well) for a long time, but I haven’t thought about it in those terms before.

When it comes to research, some of these trains of thought are great stretching-excercises for the brain as well as excellent reality checking tricks, but oftentimes not much more. It’s easy to get bogged down in thinking and forgetting to stay pragmatic and actually produce something concrete. (If your’re into that sort of thing… which I guess engineers should be.)

The paper I read this week was really good as well, and I got some good discussion out of it at the seminar. Dear diary, it was a good week. I think I learned something. Now I need to start reading next weeks texts.

Theme 3: pre-reflection

I read an article from Journal of Communication, the primary journal of the International Communication Association, concentrating on (no surprises here) communications research. The journal claims to be especially interested in inter-disciplinary research, to reflect it's status as a forum of general research, cross-pollinating theories from the different sub-fields that fall under the broad category of communication sciences.

The paper I chose to read was from the above journal and is named "Undermining the Corrective Effects of Media-Based Political Fact Checking? The Role of Contextual Cues and Naive Theory". The paper deals with corrective effects of media fact checking in political issues. It examines how contextual cues can activate deeply seated prejudice and naive theories and therefore have a negative effect of the intended corrective effects of fact-checking. The empirical basis for the paper is an online embedded survey (N=750) and the statistics it rendered. The aims is to investigate to what extent the corrective effects of fact-checking work when paired with contextual cues designed to elicit a trigger of naive theories. The method is sound and the paper does well in criticising its chosen methods, but the theories used are, although frequently referenced, numerous and it is, in my own opinion, not immediately apparent to what extent they are compatible with each other and on what levels of analysis they can be applied. This is of course, much due to the characteristics of cross-disciplinary communication research; I think the paper gains a lot of merit from it's discussion and how it relates to the theories used.

1. Theory can be understood as a set of propositions that identifies some constructs or (abstract) objects and further relating them to each other in some nominal way. Theories can fall into different categories; theories used for analysis, for explanation, for prediction, for a combination of explanation and prediction or for suggesting action or design (functionalistic theory). In the natural sciences, theories that aim to explain phenomena almost exclusively rely on some form of causality. Presenting data and diagrams is not the same as using theory, and neither is referring to others' use of theory. To have a solid theoretical base for any argument, the propositions of the theory itself needs to be a part of the argument, before implications can be suggested and conclusions from data can be drawn.

2 -> 3. The major theory used in the paper is a theory of "Naive Theories", which is to be understood as a theory of mental models that represent implicit beliefs. Heuristic methods that people use to make sense of the world around us and categorise phenomena by using naive explanation models, oftentimes subconsciously. This theory could be said to belong both to the field of psychology and sociology, but primarily behavioural science, and aims at explaining the behaviour of people, as well as to some extent predicting behaviour as well. The aim of the paper could be seen as trying to find evidence that would suggest a design/action theory for the specific domain of media-based political fact checking on the basis of empirical data in conjunction with the theories used. The benefits of the theory is apparent in it's strength of explaining empirical data from, for example surveys, where N is large. The major limitation that is evident from the paper is how sensitive the theory is to context and the diversity of the sample-group. It seems that there is large number of not easily identifiable factors that can impact the behaviour of people, apart from those factors that the theory identifies, which makes its validity hard to confirm of falsify in particular instances. It therefore a theory that is very hard to test directly, because a laboratory setting that eliminates every other source of error is practically impossible (which could be said always is the case with theories of human behaviour).

Theme 2: post-reflection

The Dialectics of Enlightenment was a dense piece of literature to try and get at. I almost lost faith a handful of pages into The Concept of Enlightenment because I doubted that between all of the references to theories I hadn't read and the unfamiliar, almost totalitarian style of agumentation, there would be much left for me to compehend. It was made much more accessible, however, by meta-reading for a bit; some online lectures on the work as well as a couple of summaries of the main ideas made it feel a bit easier on the mind.

I went into the reading with prejudice that it contained something very interesting. I feel like I got that feeling confimed, but I also feel like the morepart of the theory is inaccessible to me, because of lack of backgroundknowledge and time to study. However, I'll have to presume that we weren't supposed to get to a very high level of understanding.

I was mostly fascinated with the descriptive part of the book, the conceptualizing of sociological phenomena and their relation to philosophical and psychological theories. (Yes, the part I understood the least of, but also a major part of the book.) I was not as impressed by the conclusions they drew from them, interesting as they were, they felt a bit reductio in absurdum, and, given the amount of septicism, not very inspiring or constructive.

I would have liked more time at the seminar for discussion, preferably with some questions or propositions as guidance. That said, the discussion that did happen was interesting. We touched briefly on a point that I find very interesting: in present time we talk about how internet with its democratizing characteristics turns culture consumers into producers aswell. What happens when you look at the productive aspects of social media through the lens of Adorno and Horkheimer? I'm not quite sure. On one hand, it's not a phenomenon that can without problem be compared to others in their time, but on the other hand, they discuss amateur producers and how they too are stuck in perpetuating the agenda/ideology of the powerful. At one point in chapter 4, Adorno writes that talented performers are a part of the system long before they are "discovered" and put on stage. The very fact that they produce something that works as entertainment or culture in the system makes them eager to be a part of it. The brainwashing has already gone full circle, if one is to interpret the text in the same resigned, frustrated manner it was written in. I think, that with critical theory in mind, it will be much more interesting to not only think about who produces the content in our present media landscape, but also what type of content is produced by people, inside which frameworks, testing which boundaries and repeating/confirming which patterns/ideologies.

If Adorno and Horkheimer have a point in their analysis on mass culture, then it seems that the masses becoming producers of content themselves would be one of the most interesting ways to asses the state of things. But that almost sounds optimistic, and I don't mean to be optimistic. I concur with the authors on all points. Culture is doomed and communication is impossible if we don't raze all and build new. </frustration> 

Theme 2: pre-reflection

1. Enlightenment, when used in Dialectics… is a very broad concept. It takes its name from the historical period that spanned over the 18th century and was characterized by a newfound faith in the natural sciences, independent thinking, the scientific method and the dispelling of myths. Kant famously described Enlightenment as man emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Meaning that by shedding our dogmatic belief in authority and instead turning to autonomy and rational thought, we are free to start gathering real knowledge.

Adorno and Horkheimer takes these ideals of Enlightenment out of their historical context and, it seems to me, almost tries to equate it with a part of human nature: our yearning to make sense of and explain nature. Enlightment, they say, this concept that they distill, has a trajectory towards mans total domination of nature, and the objectification of all, ultimately even the subject.

2. The concept of Myth in Dialectics… is the thing to which Enlightenment is related. Therein lies the dialectic. Myth is false clarity, the subjectification of the unexplained. Adorno and Horkheimer discuss at length naturalistic religious practises and narratives and puts forth animism and antropomorphism as primary characteristics of myth. They say that myth stems from a fear of the unknown and through that the will to explain it, contain the unknown in something knowable – the myth. All myths could ultimately be reduced to a subject. The kicker is that Adorno and Horkheimer posits Myth and Enlightment as essentially the same, but also as the two constituents of a dichotomy, atleast when viewed from the Enlightened perspective and how it strives to demystify and rid the world of Myth.

3.  Although they aren't referred to as old and new, different types of media are put in relation to eachother in the book, primarily in how they are used by the culture industry. The radio is compared to the telephone, with it's qualities of mass-mediation held up to the light. With the telephone, the subject still had a part to play; the radio reduces the subject to a consumer, the material being consumed served up by the industry rather than a subject. Television is prophesized to be the next disastrious step in mass-mediation and the subjugation of individual expression. My understanding is that new media according to Adorno is media in service of the culture industry.

4. The culture industry is the commodification of art, art deprived of it's aesthetic value. The subject matter of culture is irrelevant in every respect other than that is fits the demand of the consumers, a demand that the industry foresees, dictates and perpetuates at the same time. Culture in it's industrialized form is reduced to ideology and the indoctrination of the masses. Any one individual is free to not swallow what is spoonfed to him or her, but the price is ostracization. The thesis is that culture served up by the industry is devoid of any spiritual value, because it's raison d'etre can always be traced back to the capitalist system.

5. Mass media and mass deception are inseparable according to the authors. That which is being mediated en masse never carries the meaning that motivates it. It is the most powerful economical forces that ultimately stand behind what is being produced in the culture industry (and mass-mediated) and their motivation is per default deception, because of the system that they represent.

6. I found the chapter of the concept of enlightenment very interesting, mostly because I understood so little of it and couldn't help but focus on the structure of the argumentation and the totalitarian style of writing. The criticism is so wholly encompassing that nothing escapes is. This seems to me to be a reason why the authors cannot put forth any way out of the problem; any solution that they could formulate would fall under their own criticism. That, however does not mean it's not a, at times, very interesting text, on many levels. At times it feels like flawed argumentation hidden in it's own density, it's constant use of symbolism and metaphors and heavvy dependency on references to classical works. The reader who is to argue with the text has to be very well equipped indeed.

The chapter on the culture industry was much easier reading and made the ideas of the authors much more accessible. The part that I found most interesting was how they argued for the systems total control over consumers; talented artists belong to the industry even before it puts them on stage, simply because their talent shows their eagerness to be a part of the system. In their vision, this brainwashing has already gone full circle and none of us could claim to be independent of this culture, rubbish as they would have it.

Theme 1: post-reflection

I have been very much impressed by the writings of other course participants following our previous week of reading; while I haven't read every single post, the once I have read did put forth some very interesting and different views on the material.

Myself, I thought The Problems of Philosophy was a pleasure to read. Compared to other texts in the field, Russel uses a straightforward and concise language, chooses his examples carefully and goes in-depth without getting too verbose. I was happy to get this chance for repetition, since some of the ideas were ones I encountered earlier during the semester while taking a course in epistemology and philosophy of science at Stockholm University.

That said, I feel like we the balance between how much we were tasked with reading and how much time was set of for reflection and discussion was way off, especially since the lecture and seminar was cancelled. I think reading a book like this, writing a brief reflection on it, even having the seminar and lecture we didn't get a chance to have, it just rushing it too much. I would rather have seen an assignment of reading just a couple of chapters and discussing them properly and in depth, alternatively reading a lengthier summary of the work and discussing that. The discussion, otherwise, is doomed to get skewed and not be particularly fruitful because everyone has focused on different things that felt more or less accessible to them.

Let me try on a thought: I feel like the way this course is planned very similarly to many other courses on KTH, specifically engineering-courses. To go over a lot of material in a brief period of time and then show, in some way or another, that you get the big picture (or at least parts of it). I can see the merit of this approach when it comes to the engineering disciplines – in those fields it's a great thing to have a superficial knowledge of a lot of different concepts, because when you find yourself in front of a problem, you may not know the solution, but know where to look for it.

In the case of philosophy on the other hand, I don't feel like you gain much at all from this sort of cursory introduction other than the awareness that questions like this have been discussed and familiarity with some of the terminology. The points that Russel, and other philosophers are trying to make (I'm getting bold here) are oftentimes sublime and not easily grasped by just reading through a text a single time. However, it is easy to feel like you got the point, at least that is my experience with it, having realized at later points how my initial interpretation of certain philosophical texts was completely off the mark.

I don't think it's necessarily a good thing to walk away from a book like this (and the Theaetetus dialogue for that matter) with a feeling of having gained insight, when you haven't been given the time to discuss and reflect properly. (With the obvious exception of it leading to the inspiration to pursue it further outside of school.) Tying this try-on-thought together with Russel's discussion of the value of philosophy, I think my point is that by reading a lot of material in a short time like this, not dedicating any serious time for discussion is actually diminishing the subject and not thinking about the way philosophical ideas are utilized, when the have value, versus how we use the knowledge that we get from engineering-courses.

I think that concludes my thought-attempt. I kind of like it, but then, I haven't reflected on it more that just briefly. I hope you'll tell me in which ways you think I'm wrong.

Theme 1: pre-reflection

What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

Russel's defines as sense-data the things immediately known in sensation. Not the sensations themselves, but the objects of the sensation – what is sensed. He exemplifies by saying that you can have a sensation of a colour (e.g. green), but the colour itself, he says, is not a sensation, but a piece of sense-data.

The concept of sense-data is vital to his discussion about the ontology of matter (physical objects) and how we experience it. He proposes that we cannot directly know anything about a physical object apart from the set of sense-data we associate with it. What sense-data about an object we are able to experience through sensation varies, of course, depending on our physiology and our relation to the object. Colours of objects, for instance, depends on how light is reflected by them and how we catch those reflections in our pupils. Thus, both spatial relation as well as the physiology of our sensory organs affect what sense-data we get a sensation of.

What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?

When Russel speaks about propositions he speaks about the logical meaning of a statement. He is pointing to the meaning behind the language: the propositions are the carriers of meaning. The same proposition could be stated in different ways, depending on how you order the words or what language you use, for instance.

Propositions and statements of fact differ from other forms of linguistic expressions in that they predicate something about reality, they have a truth-value that can be evaluated. The building blocks of propositions are, according to Russel, objects and properties. The meaning of a proposition then, depends on what objects and properties it contains, as well as it's structure (what is predicated about what).

Russels propositions are closely related to logical form; if two verbal statements are said to represent the same proposition, they have to have the same logical form.

In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

A definite description is a description that refers to a definite entity. (an entity that can could be named.) In classical meaning-theory, Russels definite descriptions would be descriptions of names or singular terms (terms that have a reference), as opposed to general terms (which have an extension; a set of referenced objects if you will).

He uses the term definite description to differentiate between such descriptions and ambiguous descriptions, that is, a description that points out something general (the so-and-so versus a so-and-so).

In chapter 13 and in chapter 14, Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

Russel puts forth a view on truth that is very well aligned with the idea of the scientific method. He discusses truth, falsehood and probable opinion, and concludes that most of what we know should be considered probable opinion.

He is confident that truth cannot just be true belief, but argues that it must have some sort of justification. This line of arguing isn't new, but can be traced back to Plato. The sort of justification he proposes brings him to a circular definition: True belief based on known premisses. This he solves by proposing two different definitions.

Truth, he says, can be derivative or intuitive, and derivative truths should be able to be reduced to intuitive truths, making the latter the more interesting of the two in analysis.

He further structures his understanding of intuitive knowkedge by claiming that we can have knowledge about truths (judgments), and knowledge about things (acquaintance). The latter category here, he determines, is the only one that can produce infallible truths, becasuse we cannot be acquainted with something that does not exist. This leads him to the issue of how these truths seem to be self-evident. 

He discusses these self-evident truths, which I understand as a priori truths that don't neccessarily have to be absolute, but has an element of relativity. The absolute self-evident truths are those most closely connected with our immediate sensory experiences, memory and perhaps self-conciousness.

The most interesting part of his chapter on the limits of knowledge, I think, is his reflections on how new scientific discoveries seem to thwart metaphysical speculation of the kind that was prominent during the 17th trough 19th centuries. He comes off as very scientifically optimistic and emphasizes how a lot of old contradictions have been proven illusory by modern science. He, being a logician, proclaims that logic has gone from barring possibilities to liberating the imagination, giving us tools for imagining all possible worlds. Philosophys role in this should be as the watchdog of the other sciences, if I interpret him correctly. An objectively critical science, not primarily aimed at supplying answers, but upholding intellectual earnesty.