Post theme 3. 

This week’s seminar had a lot of focus on finding a paper from a research journal with an impact factor with a rating above 1.0. Prior to the week, I had no idea what this concept was, which I now know that it is a measurement of the average citations of the papers which it includes.

Before this week’s literature, theory was synonymous to hypotheses for me, and the way which the word is used in everyday speech such as “I have a theory about this or that” was the actual meaning of the word. However, after the seminars I have a much better understanding of what theory actually is – and how it is actually empirically based models to explain a phenomenon. What I find quite interesting however is that they are only models, and a theory might over time get replaced by another one. What I mean by this is the fact that a well-renowned theory can never be proven to be fact, and over time (it might be after 10 years, or even 100 years) – another theory starts emerging, which is another model to explain the same phenomenon. And when this new theory emerges, the first one might slowly dissipate as it is proven to not be correct. What is fascinating about this is that theory can never be proven, it can only be disproven – and a theory about a phenomenon will only ever be the “leading” theory, and never the “correct” theory.

During the seminar, me and my group had a very interesting discussion about the 5 categorizations of a theory. We all had a hard time drawing clear distinctions between the different types – for example, what is the difference between an analysis and an explanation? What is the difference between explanation and prediction in comparison to design and action? Our discussion was centered about that all of these might not be clear cut, and they overlap quite a bit. A paper can analyze a phenomenon while trying to explain it (but might not be a clear enough explanation to be categorized as one).  This led me to understand (with the help of my seminar group), that my paper was not only an analysis – but by analyzing the trends, they do in fact have an element of prediction of how news outlets can use the trends described in the article to anticipate how the future might look.

Another thing I learnt during the seminar is that the different categories of a theory are not within a hierarchy. I thought that, for example, prediction is better than an analysis – because it goes “deeper” into the subject at hand. Depending on what you seek to answer with your article, the different categories are all different approaches to find the answer. So, I would say that when starting out with writing an article, you have to decide what type of a theory you want to develop, and use an approach suitable for it. For some theories, an analysis is all you need (which can then be built on by other papers), whereas some theories require an explanation as well.  

All in all, I had an easier time understanding the concepts of this theme in comparison to theme 1 and 2 – but it is very interesting to think about how an everyday word such as “theory” is so much more than just a basic hypothesis.