måndag 17 mars 2014

Theme 6: Reflection

I see case studies a necessity rather than simply a powerful tool in certain areas of media technology research (for example studies of communication, social media etc.). The objects of interest for study within such areas can be hard, if not impossible to recreate in a controlled environment, making real world examples a necessity in order to have something to examine.

On a more personal note, the close real-world connection of case study makes this method more interesting for me. I only have experience of case solving, as I haven’t had the chance to do proper case studies yet. But even though these two have different goals I see similarities. Both are based on a real world problem or event and use existing research to look at the subject, but in one case, the goal is to propose a solution while in the other, it is to find answers to questions such as “why?”, “how?” and so on.

The texts I’ve read for this theme gave me a concrete example of another difference between the activities mentioned above, namely the tied in quantitative research. The case solving I’ve been part of were all given a very limited time span (and as far as I know, this is applied to most case solving’s), meaning that was no time to confirm one’s hypotheses with collected quantitative data.


It’s hard to tell now, but I have got a feeling that this theme will have been of most use for me in my work with the master thesis essay. The first paper I wrote about in the precious post (regarding Facebook and personal security) raised a question mark in regard of the target group sampling in said article. It will remind me to be extra careful when I formulate the sampling group for the quantitative data collection.

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