POL I SCI 300

5.17.2010

Characteristics of Scientific Research:

1. 1.       Empirical(Positive)”what is” – based on the scientific process of inquiry : WHAT RESEARCH SHOULD BE
   1. Normative – “what should be” – value laden : NOT WHAT RESEARCH SHOULD BE
2. Observable – based on observations
   1. We cannot observe normative claims
   2. Sometimes easy to observe  – i.e. protest activity
   3. c.       Sometimes difficult – i.e. trust in government
3. 3.       Verifiable – reproducible by self and by other researchers
   1. a.      Needs tangible data  or “ingredients”
   2. b.      Must follow and provide a research method or a “recipe”
4. Falsifiable – can be proven wrong
   1. Scientific knowledge is tentative, can and should be revised
   2. b.      i.e. Voting Turnout

                                     i.      self-interest

                                     ii.      civic duty

                                     iii.      education

                                    iv.      communication

1. Cumulative
   1. Verification

                               i.      Not EXACT

                                                                         ii.      Different contexts

                                                                        iii.      Different times

                                                                       iv.      Different questions

1.  Falsifiable

                                                                           i.      Refining, polishing

1. General/Generalizable
   1. Broad applicability
   2. We don’t want to explain why one person voted, we want to explain why people or some type of people vote
   3. Why countries go to war
   4. Why are candidates successful or unsuccessful
2. Explanatory/predictive
   1. Logical propositions for why/how something occurs
   2. Establish causation

                                                                           i.      Economic conditions

                                                                         ii.      Focusing events

1. Probabilistic, not absolute
2. Parsimonious – concise
   1. Simplicity is highly valued

                                                                           i.      Why do candidates succeed?

1. One theory suggested the “attractiveness” of the candidate

Acquiring Scientific Knowledge

1. Induction
   1. Specific observation -> general principle

                                                                           i.      i.e. Darwin and the finches

1. Deduction
   1. General principle -> specific observation

The Important Role of Theory:

Theory: helps organize, systematize and coordinate existing knowledge

1. Necessarily a simplification of reality.
2. Testing – deduction
   1. Individual vote because of self-interest
   2. Building – induction
      1. Individuals vote in the absence of self-interest, why?

Scientific Research is iterative:

                Theory -> test/observe  -> revise -> test/observe -> revise -> Theory

                                It’s a circle!        

Diversity and Disagreements

1. Qualitative/Quantitative
   1. Words vs. numbers
   2. What is knowable?
      1. All research is biased
      2. Critical theory – research should be normative          

For Next Class: buy 10 stamps for class, and complete blackboard assignment 1

Technology Acceptance Model wins.  The greatest example I can think of is blogging, or microblogging.  It’s all about forming a habit, if you don’t think to do it, you won’t.  How many people open online accounts for sites that they abandon after a few days? Everyone does it.  You try something new, it doesn’t catch on in your mind, and you leave it never to come back, like a toy a week after Christmas.  This concept would help a business because of usage.  Employees who are continually instant messaged by other employees during the day will automatically build the habit of I.M. – and a habit is a nasty thing to break.

You can read the paper too, online here. It’s written by

Viswanath Venkatesh of University of Maryland
Michael G. Morris of University of Virginia
Gordon B. Davis of University of Minnesota
Fred D. Davis of University of Arkansas

I thought about live-tweeting while I read, but decided that I enjoy reading and absorbing the information too much to interrupt myself in that way.  Instead, I took notes.

The first article was Diffusion of Virtual Innovation by Mark A. Fuller of Washington State University, Andrew M. Hardin of University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Christopher L. Scott of Washington State University

You can read it here.

Here are some of my notes from the first article-

Notes:

• Keywords (from Fuller et al 2007): Computer Self-Efficacy, Diffusion of
  Innovations, Innovation Decision Process, Second
  Life, Technology Acceptance, Technology Adoption,
  Trust, Virtual Teams, Virtual Team Efficacy, Virtual
  World Technology.
• Second Life for business transactions… hmm
• Which is better, top down adoption or bottom up adoption for social media in the workplace?
• How many people are being persuaded via the bandwagon to join social media vs. joining out of true interest (twitter for example)
• Second Life, mentioned alot, although I missed the bandwagon with it – did anyone use it who can share their experience? I have no reference for how it could be good/bad for working relationships…
• “group-level inhibitors” just sound like the willingness of clique to accept a new technology

• isomorphism is an interesting concept for social media – companies need to stay current with one another, copying strategies that work and adapting

The three biggest factors for a technology adoption to be successful would be its ability to cross age, gender, social/economic divides, its flexibility to bridge from entertainment to businesses, and its simplicity.

Let’s start with the twitter overview:

I tweet.  Alot.  But I despise the Twitter website.  I laugh when I see “sent from the web” on someone’s tweet.  Why? Because of the 10000+ other ways you can send a tweet or interact with twitter.  Let me lay it out for you. Here are the various ways I have tweeted in the past:

Web:  This is like, day 1 twitter users.  Beginners.  And 8 year olds. And probably Sarah Palin.

Tweetdeck:  I soon (approximately 5 seconds after joinging twitter) migrated to TweetDeck, a freestanding program you can run on your computer – its free to download at http://www.tweetdeck.com and you can form various groups, and they roll on lists in real time.  You can get pop up notifications showing the number of new tweets, or displays the whole message, etc.  Cons:  People that I’ve unfollowed still show up when I go to edit a group, so there’s a large list of unwanted options. Also, tweets sometimes disappear completely – @mihaela_v has noticed this alot lately as well.  And when recieving @ replies, it has been taking a substantial amount of time to recieve them. (i.e. 5-10 minutes later IS NOT IN REAL TIME!)

Text:  In my pre-iPhone days, I would text tweets.  Usually in class.  If you have a non-internet friendly phone, I highly recommend this… so when something tweet-worthy pops in your head you can document it fast.

Twitpic:  I love twitpic.  LOVE IT.  You sign up on the website first and give them your phone number, and they link your phone number to your twitter account.  Then you’ll have a phone number to text your pictures to.  Very easy to use, and a very popular picture viewing site for twitter.

Tweetie/Tweetie 2:  I now most prominently use Tweetie 2 on my iPhone to access all things twitter related.  New replies appear MUCHfaster than in tweetdeck, and its very easy to use.  You can read more about this app through the Apple App Store.

Brizzly:  I got a beta brizzly account a while back to test out the features.  I’m always curious to see what other people are doing, and I love jumping on the beta bandwagon.  Brizzly is a website for tweeting from the web, it does utilize some of the cool features of standalone apps, such as groups.  It also has some fun wiki concepts: all trending topics can be explained and edited by everyone. I’d give it a B. I still don’t care for the ‘tweeting from the web’ thing.

Now for my favorite sites that utilize twitter for the greater awesomeness:

Twitterfall: Real time waterfall of anything you want.  It’s a web UI – but still cool.  It could be a person’s twitter name, and search keyword, @replies to a famous person – whatever you want.  You can have as many search words as you want – for example: you could add all four members of a band that you were about to see the next day. Or all 7 members of your CGT581 class.  Anyway, it’s really cool.

Favstar: I LOVE FAVSTAR.  It shows the tweets most favorited for the day, week, etc. You can also join and it will track your tweets and how many favorites you have gotten.  I think of it as an awesomely high honor for someone to favorite my tweets.  Like my twitter idol, @meetingboy has favorited me in the past. (Ok like twice but who’s counting) and you can see what he starred on my favstar.fm page.  This site is mainly alot of jokes and memes and whatnot, more personal use than businesses – but still awesome.  AWESOME.

Overheardit: Another site about people’s tweets – based on things people have overheard in real life or ran across on someone’s twitter page.  Not usually as entertaining, but sometimes it will surprise you with something retweet-ably good.

Now a little bit about Facebook:

I censor myself alot more on facebook – and read every article that comes out about facebook privacy.  There are some notable fun things on facebook though, that you might not know:

Languages: Go to your facebook page and scroll down to the bottom.  See where it reads “English (US)”?  Click on it.  Try using English (Upside Down) or English (Pirate) instead.  I’ve done each of these for a few days and I can say with no doubt that – you will laugh at least 2-3 times a day.  Seriously.

Easter Eggs: open facebook and then hit “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, enter” The only way I can describe it is a bubble thing? That floats around your page. It’s cool. That’s all.

Facebook Guide: http://www.allfacebook.com/ is an unofficial guide to facebook – and very helpful, and entertaining.

lolfbmoments:  http://www.lolfbmoments.com are user submitted screen captures of things found on facebook.  Potentially NSFW language, and at times crude, but that’s kids these days, right?  Check out their Hall of Fame.

Other Notable Social Media/News Sites I frequent:

ValleyWag – Tech and Social Media News from Silicon Valley

Digg – Any other awesome news, promoted by its users

Foursquare – interactive wheres waldo – see my previous post on it for more info.

Attempting to upload the network theory presentation. Presented with Huijun – here’s her blog if you’re curious. http://huijunsuo.wordpress.com/

This bring me back to my original point.  Harvard has a great idea with the game they’ve designed using Foursquare! It’s interactive, allowing students to visit various places on campus.  It sounds really entertaining and definitely something I would participate in at Purdue, if there was such a thing.  This is a great example of ingenious people who think outside the box.  The internet and real life mixing together in a unique way.

Here’s the link to the article.  It’s worth the read.

Harvard’s Game of Foursquare

http://mashable.com/2010/01/12/harvard-foursquare/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

And in case you’re wondering,  I’m currently mayor of 8 separate places, including an ice skating rink, a dance studio, the computer science building, and Jake’s Roadhouse.