Post-Theme 3: Research and theory

So, this week we've been talking about what theory is and is not. I think that I managed to summarise it nicely in the Pre-Theme3-post after reading Gregor's The Nature of Theory in Information Systems and Sutton's What Theory is Not. 

What people in general call a theory might not be a theory at all

Even though I regard it as relevant, I know that the paper I chose might seem like a quite odd bird in the Media Technology forest. I think it has to do with my background and interest in electronics, since I actually have studied electronics and computer systems for three years at KTH and worked within IT and later electronics manufacturing sector for a number of years before adding the Media-layer on top of that. My argument that media storage is an important part of Media Technology might be a little bit like saying that knowing a lot about paper quality is important to be able to print good news. But even though it might not be rock solid, I think it still holds. And we did add both the paper to the example papers and the theory of the paper to the examples of theories during the seminar. The theory of this paper was of a Design and action type (Gregor) which seems quite uncommon for Media Technology research papers, at least of what I've seen so far. That's why we chose to add it, we called it "Theory of Information Storage".


Anyway, during the seminar we discussed what theory is and some added and modified the "What is theory" page. I think that there were some nice ideas about it but still, it's always possible to question any definition, perhaps something that we've learnt from reading Russell and Plato. For instance, there was a kind of consensus in the seminar group that a theory needed consensus as well. But, was it enough if a team of experts, an esoteric consensus if you will, or would the understanding and confirmation of the construction of a theory need support from other groups as well?

Most Media Technology research seems to have a lot to do with psychology and social interaction, and the most common theories selected so far seem to be of the Analysis or Explanation types. That's all good and useful in many cases, however I like when research can actually lead to some action of improvement as well. And of course, another research could be based on the one that used the Analysis theory, use it as a reference and then perhaps apply a theory that is more of Design and action.


I feel now that I've got a better understanding of what can be called theory in a research paper. That the findings can only be part of the theory if explained how and why. Though, it's going to take a few more research papers to even better understand the different variants, and it's clear now that writing a decent research paper requires adequate understanding of what theory is and how it should be presented.