Theme 2 - Before

What theory is and isn’t

Theory is to be used to present a logical flow of arguments underlying an authors hypotheses about a given subject. Many do this inadequately in their papers. Common mistakes are said to be focusing on just presenting data, diagrams and references. These by themselves do not provide theory - but used as aides may indeed help to explain or clarify theories.
The focus on writing theories should be in laying forth logical arguments for an idea or a statement. Data needs to be used moderately and most importantly relevantly in theory. Diagrams are useful to illustrate and to make your arguments clearer. References too are useful but a reader will most probably not be familiar with every work you cite in your research, you can therefore not simply refer to other articles in lieu of presenting your arguments. The main thing to answer with theory is the why.

So as a conclusion theory is an implement to explain phenomena, and to predict future events.

Paper

“Norm evolution and violation on Facebook” (C. McLaughlin, J. Vitak) from the journal “New Media & Society” (IF: 1.394) issue March 2012.
(http://nms.sagepub.com.focus.lib.kth.se/content/14/2/299.full)

The norms in the subject refers to the mostly implicit (not explicit) terms under which users engage each other on social network services, in this particular instance the focus environment has been Facebook. This involves the material and content that users post, and what happens when someone violates the existing norms in some way. For example if someone posts something inappropriate or offensive, or if their posting habits differ from what is considered “normative”. The paper is about how norms like these evolved. They make a distinction between violations of expectations (which are more likely to happen within certain sub-groups) and general norm violations. The latter are presented above, but to explain the former they are when someone steps out of line with what a user expectes. Participants of the focus groups used were said to have learned the norms by observing how others behaved, as well as knowing the norms of everyday life. The actual norms listed in the article are far too many to list here, but it can at least be interesting in knowing the conclusion about how they were formed. A theory is also presented that the media affects how the norms evolve - participants claimed to have become more concerned about privacy after this became prominently mentioned in media. This also affected the content posted. Example of a norm violation was said to be engaging in "fights" or heated discussions publicly on Facebook, a pretty common violation.

The arguments in the paper are causal but does not really provide predictions beyond what can be showed through their method to have already happened during their examination. Because of this I think that the theory used fits most well into “II. Explanation”. It can be said to be attempting to explain the subject matter in terms of why - to put it abstractly they go through events and what followed them, explaining and analysing but they are not generally aiming to predict as much.

Benefits and limitations

The authors write that the norms evolve with time so the theories in this paper may not be current in a few years. Especially with regards to something of such a volatile nature as social networks. It does provide, when performed well, the benefit of a concept of understanding certain established events. I think theory is used well in this paper because it relates to sort of an implicit rule system, which benefits from explanation.