The journal describes two modes of publicity, openness and promotion, and their implications on traditional broadcasting versus online communication. She argues that the discussions of the democratic potential of the internet needs to take these questions of publicity in serious consideration.
"These two understandings of publicity, as openness and as promotion, capture two problems of democratic communication. The more open a channel of communication, the more diverse opinions it can include, but the less clearly it can focus attention on any particular topic.” “On the other hand … focussed communication risks flattening discussion into a homogenized message that excludes alternative points of view.”
She describes the importance of traditional television over other digital media for promoting parties during elections in the USA, and also how the television affects the viewers knowledge and opinions when viewing late night programs, such as The Daily Show, regularly. The TV focuses the attention and the Internet seems to be dispersing it. To get people to see your content on the Internet is much harder than just to broadcast it out on a popular television channel - you need your visitors to find you on their own way.
She also talks about using social media or more specifically Facebook as a broadcasting media. When using Facebook you are both a producer and a consumer. So it goes in both directions. There are however people, as for example Obama and Ashton Kutcher, who gather an enormous number of followers and then use Facebook as a broadcasting channel.
In the conclusion she says that "Only by allowing both a publicity of attention and a publicity of openness in the mainstream media can we hope that both can also flourish online."
1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is, and what theory is not.
Theory is a generalization of a phenomenon and the causation of it. Why did the phenomenon happen and how are we to explain it in an abstract or generalized way?
I also found this quote on the course web regarding theories: "Theory is about the connections between phenomena, and explaining WHY, HOW and under WHICH circumstances acts, events, structure, and thoughts occur. Theory attempt to explain the causal logic between cause and event."
Theory is not references, data, list of variables or constructions, diagrams and hypotheses. The theories are, on the other hand, supported by diagrams and data, etc.
In the text "What Theory is Not" it says that data is required to describe which empirical patterns are observed, but theory on the other hand is why these empirical patterns are observed or are expected to be observed. I thought it was a good example and it shows that it isn't the facts or the diagrams that are theory - it is the underlying meaning that you get from the data and the explanation of why that data emerged.
2. Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?
I would say that the theory type used in "A very popular blog: The internet and the possibilities of publicity" is mostly Explanation or maybe a little of Design and Action. Brenton is mostly only explaining what is now and it isn't tested or predictive. But I thought that it might be a little of Design and Action (if I understood that type correctly) because she tells us to take publicity in regard and that we need to discuss this matter when talking about democratic possibilities of the internet and in traditional media. But she doesn't really give us explicit prescriptions...
"Discussions of the democratic possibilities of the internet need to explore the ability of particular sites to build publicities of both openness and promotion and to analyze these within the context of the wider media environment"
"Discussions of the democratic possibilities of the internet need to explore the ability of particular sites to build publicities of both openness and promotion and to analyze these within the context of the wider media environment"
3. Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?
The limitations of these theories might be that they haven't looked on what is going to be and it doesn't feel as "deep" as it would have done if it had been for example Explanation and Prediction. The benefits might be that the article now has caught someone's eye who then can start digging into it a little deeper.
Sources other than the given texts:
http://nms.sagepub.com.focus.lib.kth.se/content/13/2/187.full.pdf
https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/what-is-theory-2/
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