(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for
Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the
course is available on the course page [1].)
To find a research journal that I believe is relevant for media
technology research, I did a lot of search work on the Internet. During this
process, some journals have not been finally chosen since their impact factors
are below 1.0. This is unexpected result which I would like to discuss more
with professors and classmates, because most of them are popular or recommended
by Google or other big websites. If they are not ‘that good’ or ‘influential’,
then why they are that ‘popular’? Anyway, the final research journal I found is
IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (IEEE MULTIMEDIA), which is high quality with
an impact factor of 1.78 (according to Research Gate’s data[2]). This journal
is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the breadth of research
in multimedia technology and applications, including: circuits, algorithms and
architectures, software design, synchronization, joint processing of
multimedia/multimodal signals/data, compression, storage, retrieval,
networking, multi-modality devices/ systems [2]. Personally, I think
this is a journal which more close to ‘technology’ rather than ‘culture’
compared to the other ones in my search results. This is another main reason
for my choice.
On the other hand, the selected research paper is Media
cloud: When media revolution meets rise of cloud computing by Tan and Su [3].
The paper is published in the high quality journal IEEE TMULTIMEDIA
aforementioned. It is of high quality and relevant for media technology
research. In the paper, the authors argue that a media revolution will come due
to the technology development of both Internet and Media, and thus proposing
research on ‘media cloud’. To be more specific, the aim of the paper is to
discuss the challenges of media cloud and propose a new architecture for the
media cloud. The theoretical framing is based on the key concept ‘cloud
computing’. For the research method, the authors try to integrate the
successful technology ‘cloud computing’ and media processing, thus proposing a
new architecture for the media cloud. (How to name this methodology has to
be decided later.) Furthermore, the findings of this paper include the
possibility of the integration of cloud computing and media processing, and a
comprehensive overview on the recent media cloud research work. The authors
also discuss the challenges of the media cloud; and then summarize its
architecture, the architecture, the processing, and its storage and delivery
mechanisms. With regards to the implications of the paper, the most important
thing is the new architecture proposed for the media cloud, and also
suggestions on how to build a media cloud and several future research topics.
As theory is something proved to be well-substantiated, and
scientific theory is acquired by using scientific method; it is important to
understand theory with relation to scientific method in my opinion. A theory
has to be repeated tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation
[4]. In the example paper, the theory is about ‘cloud computing’, although it
may also be seen as a new technology. It is a question that how to define it
properly from an academic perspective. In Gregor’s opinion, theory here can be
seen “as statements that say how something should be done in practice”[5]. In
this way, the theory employed in the selected paper can be characterized as
Type 5 Design and Action (according to Table 2 in Gregor[5]). As a result, the
benefits of using ‘cloud computing’ theory are mainly on its practical
function. Take the selected paper as an example, it can discuss possibility as
well as propose new model in media studies based from practical reasons for
practical solutions. It is also evident that a ‘practical’ paper is not that
‘theoretical’ in academia. In my other research results, I notice that there
are many papers with a focus on theoretical discussions. In those papers,
theories are much clearer with an independent section called ‘theoretical
framework’ or ‘theoretical discussions’. In most times, theory or theories can
be found in the ‘literature review’ part.
Those are all for today’s blog. Thanks for reading. Your valuable
comments are welcome. Please let me know if you find anything interesting or
want to have a further discussion. I am looking forward to more discussions in
seminar with you all.
Sources:
[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-3-research-and-theory-2/
[2] http://www.researchgate.net/journal/1520-9210_IEEE_Transactions_on_Multimedia
[3]Tan, Mingfeng, and Xiao Su. "Media cloud: When media
revolution meets rise of cloud computing." Service Oriented System
Engineering (SOSE), 2011 IEEE 6th International Symposium on. IEEE, 2011.
[4]The Structure of Scientific Theories
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structure-scientific-theories/
[5] Gregor, Shirley. "The nature of theory in
information systems." MIS quarterly(2006): 611-642.
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