Theme 2, Reflections

What have I learnt?

What is theory?

My understanding of what theory is have gone from basically none, to at least an understanding of what the main components of a theory is. I still find it hard to identify theories when reading research papers hoverer and this might be a shortcoming from my side, but I also think that many papers are quite unclear in describing what theory is used if there even is one. From now on I will try to identify theories in every paper I read, since I think that I'm missing those types of frameworks when thinking about research and trying to write my own papers. Hopefully the list on KTH-social will come in handy in the future outside of the context of this course. 

The paper "The Nature of Theory in Information Systems" was in my opinion a bit to focused on classifying theories. I think that theory is a little bit what you make it, and the what type of theory it is depends more on how you use it rather than the intention of the one formulating it.

What did I learn from the paper of my choice?

I think that I was somewhat lucky finding a paper that used theory in a very explicit and clear way. This was great since I haven't really read a paper like that before, at least not one with a connection to media-technology. It made me realize how powerful theory can be if it's used in a meaningful way. It also showed me how to relate theory to the methods and purpose of research, something that I was definitely lacking when writing my B.Sc thesis. 

What's still missing after this week for me is the answer to the question "how to formulate theory?". I have a better understanding of what theory is, and how it can be used in research. To formulate theory is still a mystery however, even when I know that a theory should be based on logical arguments that explains causality I still think that it would be hard to formulate such arguments. But that is of course something which you cannot learn in a week, but rather comes from experience and reading other peoples theories; and now I feel much better equipped to do that.