The journal I choose is called Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC). The journal has an impact factor of 2.019 (5-year impact factor of 4,748). Its focus is social science research in communicating with computer-based media technologies. JCMC is a web-based and peer-reviewed scholarly journal.
The paper I choose is called The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites [1]. The paper examines the relationship between the use of Facebook and the formation and maintenance of social capital. The central premise of social capital is that social networks has value in terms of social networks and the inclinations that arises from these networks to do things for each other [2]. The paper analyses the dimension of social capital that refers to ones ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community (Maintained Social Capital). One of the issues with this paper is that is only examine one social community, therefore you could not generalize the findings in the paper.
The method used in this paper is a regression analyses conducted on results from a survey of undergraduate students (N=286). The recruitment was a random sample of undergraduate students Michigan State University and they were compensated with $5 for replying on the online survey with a response rate of 35,8%. The fact that the recruitment was made only from one university and that a financial compensation was made could be an issue in terms of the seriousness in the survey. If you hear that your friend gets $5 just to reply to a survey, maybe you just fill out the survey without reflecting on you answers. Also this contributes to the fact that you can't generalize the findings in the paper. Another issue with the survey is that they only had one, therefore its hard to establish causalities.
The paper measure social capital with the help of three different metrics; bridging, bonding and maintained. Of course this could be an issue cause all three categories are very subjective, making the analysis hard. The conclusion of the paper is that it’s a strong association between the usage of Facebook and three types of social capital, its also suggesting that the usage of Facebook interacts with psychological well-being and it might provide benefits for users experiencing low self-esteem.
1. According to Sutton and Staw: “Theory is the answer to queries of why. Theory is about the connections among phenomena, a story about why acts, events structure and thoughts occur”. So theory is about connecting acts, events and thoughts. It’s not about reference, data, hypotheses, diagrams and empirical patterns. Those are just helpful tools in order to support a theory. Theory is more about connecting dots and to provide an expiation of why the data/references and empirical patterns take a certain form. Theories also often are build upon each other, so new theories are often based on old ones.
2. In the paper I selected I would characterize the theory as number III in Gregor’s table – Prediction (it might be a bit of Explanation in the paper as well). The aim with the article was to understand the relationship between Facebook and social capital. Social capital is very subjective and it can explain what is, how, why, when and where but its relying on argumentation (why I think is partly Theory II and III). The article provides a greater understating in the relationship between Facebook and social capital but you there are no testable propositions (Theory III). Even though they use some kind of survey in this paper, it’s not well developed. They had to few participants, only tested one platform and they had to few participants to being able to generalize the result.
3. Of course one of the biggest issue with Theory III is that the result is not justified. They have conducted a survey that would present a deeper understating. Also another issue is that by trying to explain how people experience social capital is that it’s very subjective and depending on how the respondent interprets the question. In general feelings and personal experience are hard to explain and generalize and therefore making the Theory II hard to use in papers.
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x/full
[2] http://www.bettertogether.org/socialcapital.htm
Excellent comments.
SvaraRaderaLeif