Theme 4: Quantitative research (after lecture + seminar)

This week's topic of quantitative research, in comparison with qualitative research, did not offer much new insights to me. As I already wrote in my previous blog posts, I have done a lot of both quantitative and qualitative research during my bachelor's degree. However, there were a few new learnings for me during the lecture and the seminar.

In the lecture, we discussed the research report "Drumming in Immersive Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play". Ilias Bergström explained that he and his research group had only wanted to create an existence proof with this experiment. That was very eye-opening to me, because I had previously objected that the group of participants might not have been too representative (I have also discussed this in my blog post). A further research could now be how different groups act in the experiment. I personally would, for example, be interested in seeing how an entirely African experimental group takes body ownership of the "formally light-skinned body". Also the NEO FFI personality test triggered my interest, in case anybody else is interested in that one, here is an online version: NEO FFI Test online.  

During the seminar, we split up into small groups as usually. In our group, we quickly agreed on how we see quantitative and qualitative research and how both of them can be used effectively. We then started talking about our own previous experiences with either one of them and discussed our bachelor's theses. In my thesis, I did qualitative interviews with experts, but I have also conducted many quantitative studies for other research papers before that. We then took up the question of how quantitative and qualitative research differ in the big seminar group. I answered that it depends on the research question - for broad research questions, qualitative research is the best alternative, whereas quantitative research is suitable for narrower research questions that can easily be answered with a set of given answers in a questionnaire, for example. 

Theme 3: Research and theory (comments)

1. http://duckyduckyducky.blogspot.se/2015/09/post-seminar-3_28.html?showComment=1443471400961
2. http://remarkableathenianyouth.blogspot.se/2015/09/post-research-and-theory-or-what-maketh.html?showComment=1443471770959
3. http://dm2572byen.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory_27.html?showComment=1443472466177
4. http://literaturestuffm.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-reflections-after-lecture-and.html?showComment=1443472783098
5. http://fromplatotocasestudies.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-reflections.html?showComment=1443473139287
6. http://sannanodm2572.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-reflection.html?showComment=1443473600419
7. http://theandme15.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-part-2.html?showComment=1443473918319
8. http://ixxzw.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-after-seminar.html?showComment=1443474283972
9. http://jonathansbs.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post.html?showComment=1443474858831
10. http://rickardsdm2572.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post-seminar-reflections.html?showComment=1443475414545

Theme 3: Research and theory (after lecture + seminar)

This week's topic has honestly not taught me as much as the two previous weeks. Already during my bachelor's degree, I have had multiple seminars and lectures on research methods and theory. 

However, the lecture provided a slightly new angle on it, because we mainly discussed on a rather abstract level about what theory is. The distinction between different types of theory - scientific and philosophical theory, for example - made me think about the meanings "theory" can have in different contexts. Nonetheless, I find it quite hard to clearly distinguish these two types of theory, as they still include features which are attributed to the other. Also scientific theories can have their origin in philosophical thinking and reasoning. 

The discussion in the seminar was unfortunately a bit unstructured this week. Because everybody had read different scientific papers, it was hard to discuss the questions we had answered in our pre-topic blog posts. Still, it was quite interesting to hear what topics the others in my group had picked and how their research had been conducted. We later on discussed with the whole seminar group, which was much more interesting for me and helped me understand the definition of theory better - even though we also discussed that "theory" can probably never really be defined in one way that everybody agrees with. We agreed that "theory" always needs to be defined in a context, but as I mentioned above about scientific/philosophical theory, even there it is hard to only look at one context. In the big group, we also discussed the difference between theory and hypothesis and what stuck with me there was the answer of one fellow student who said that "a hypothesis is the first puzzle piece for building a theory". For me personally, the seminar was helpful to understand the idea of theory and why a hypothesis is not a theory.

Theme 4: Quantitative research (before)

I selected the paper "Virtual Support Communities and psychological Well-Being: The Role of Optimistic and Pessimistic Social Comparison Strategies" which was written by Anika Batenburg and Enny Das. It was published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication which has a two-year impact factor of 3.117 (Wiley Online Library).

• Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

With the study behind this paper, Batenburg and Das aimed at finding out how online support communities influence individual breast cancer patients' well-being. Therefore, they conducted an online survey which was distributed in Dutch breast cancer support forums in order to reach the relevant target group. Using an online survey is a very efficient method in terms of scalability. It can easily be distributed to a large amount of people and without geographic limitations. However, it is hard to limit access to an online survey and it might therefore be necessary to exclude some of the submitted answers from the research sample. I personally have made the experience that online surveys are one of the best quantitative research methods. As long as they are spread in the right context, they support the researcher because they are available to everybody at all times.

• What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?

I actually did not learn too much about quantitative methods from this paper because I already knew a lot about it. During my bachelor's degree I have had multiple courses dealing with different research methods and I have conducted several quantitative studies myself. 

However, I have never done a research with calculations as detailed as the ones in my paper. I had mainly used online survey tools or easier tests on SPSS, which is a statistical analysis software. 

• Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

As mentioned above, online surveys have their benefits but also their negative aspects. This particular study provided the link to a survey in seven Dutch breast cancer support forums and asked members or readers of those forums to take part in the study. First, the survey identified if the participants really were breast cancer patients and which state of the disease they were in. The following questions mainly aimed at determining how active participants were in the support forums (time spent in the online communities, activity in the forum - reading/commenting/starting topics) and whether this influenced their emotional well-being in a positive or negative way. 

Even though the distribution via the breast cancer support groups was very convenient and also relevant to gather a sample for the study, I have difficulties to see it as really representative for this study. As forum activity and emotional well-being were the two important factors in this study, it would have helped the study's validity to include people from all activity levels. I would argue, however, that even though the results showed that not all participants were equally active, probably the more engaged ones would be the ones also clicking on the link to participate in the study. Furthermore, it was difficult to distinguish precisely what exactly caused a participant's well-being even though there were also questions on offline support from friends and family. A more long-term study (this study focused on a time period of four weeks), could have revealed attitudes before joining the online community and uses and gratification of the forum visits. 

General questions / Questions based on "Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play" by Konstantina Kilteni, Ilias Bergström and Mel Slater.

• Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

Quantitative methods help to test hypotheses with a large amount of people and, thus, data. The results of a quantitative study can usually be generalised as being valid for larger groups of people or even societies or countries. However, quantitative studies are most often limited in their explanation of the results and cannot explain why something is as it is (cf. Brosius, Koschel, Haas (2007). Methoden der empirischen Kommunikationsforschung). 

In the particular example of "Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play", the quantitative research proved that individuals took ownership of their virtual bodies. However, the sample of 36 participants might have been a bit too small to generalise the results, also because all of them were university students. 

• Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

In contrast to quantitative methods, qualitative research usually focuses on smaller samples of participants. Qualitative research is less strictly structured and can therefore adapt to individual participants in an interview, for example. In a detailed research, it can be a good solution to first conduct qualitative research to establish possible motivations and reasoning for a behaviour and then quantify these with the use of, for example, a quantitative questionnaire (cf. Brosius, Koschel, Haas (2007). Methoden der empirischen Kommunikationsforschung). That would have been a better approach to the study in the article I read about users of breast cancer forums. The virtual body study, on the other hand, only aimed at proving that individuals can identify themselves with their avatars and qualitative research would not have been a good choice for that. 

Theme 2: Critical media studies (comments)

1. http://tamfmtol.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-post-critical-media-studies.html?showComment=1442851193079
2. http://dm2572rberggre.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-after.html?showComment=1442851572337
3. http://dm2572lisa.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-refelection-post.html?showComment=1442851769371
4. http://u1ifqcuc.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2_83.html?showComment=1442852074420
5. http://rchcc.blogspot.se/2015/09/reflection-of-theme2.html?showComment=1442852712427
6. http://bjornsblogggg.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-post-reflection.html?showComment=1442897390481
7. http://gklo.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-post.html?showComment=1442897867056
8. http://ninopmedia.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-reflections-0-false-18-pt-18-pt.html?showComment=1442923356256
9. http://happyblogger7.blogspot.se/2015/09/reflections-of-theme-2.html?showComment=1442923515769
10. http://alexisdm2572.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-post-seminar_21.html?showComment=1442923715337

Theme 2: Critical media studies (after lecture + seminar)

While reading Walter Benjamin, as well as Adorno & Horkheimer's texts, I had gotten the feeling that I understood them pretty well. However, the lecture and the seminar opened up totally new perspectives for me. 

In the lecture, it was especially interesting to put both texts into their historical context - the three different post-Enlightenment developments in different parts of the world (consumerism / national socialism / communism) and the different years the two texts were written in. For example, the fact that Benjamin wrote his text in Germany before World War II adds another meaning to his arguments against fascism and the introduction of aesthetics into politics. Adorno & Horkheimer, on the other hand, published their text towards the end of the war in the context of American consumerism. Already while reading The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, this reminded me a lot of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) which also criticises how society loses itself in its addiction to dull entertainment in the media. I had read the book in my bachelor's degree and analysed the topic a lot, also already a bit in connection to Horkheimer & Adorno. Neil Postman's publication also draws back to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), which I had read in high school and which portrays the dystopian scenario of a society being addicted to entertainment. Both Huxley and Adorno & Horkheimer portray what society can turn into, or already has turned into, because of the endless thrive for entertainment - in Adorno & Horkheimer's publication with mass media as a hallucinogenic drug and in Huxley's with the drug soma. 

As in the week before, the discussion in the seminar helped me to get to another level of understanding the two texts and the intention of the authors. Already in the small groups, it was very interesting to see how fellow classmates had answered the questions and to discuss different ways of understanding and our points of view. There, we for example made the connection between nominalism and enlightenment and that they both work into the same direction of focusing on the individual, which can then also be seen in mass media focusing on ordinary people. The bigger discussion with the entire seminar group then helped me to get my head around the concepts of nominalism as opposed to realism - also with a repetition of Plato's cave allegory. Of course, this also linked back again to Plato and Kant in the first theme and their use of concepts. It is very interesting to see how these theories are all somewhat intertwined and I feel that I am actually understanding what the different authors want to express because I automatically start to draw lines between them - that is a very rewarding feeling this course leaves me with. 

Theme 3: Research and theory (before)

• Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is, and what theory is not.

In their article "What Theory is Not", which was published in the Administrative Science Quarterly (Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 1995)), Sutton and Staw argue that many researcher papers are not written in a proper way. They therefore identify five important elements which are sometimes mistaken as theory but are not really theory - references, data, lists of variables, diagrams and hypotheses. Thus, following their argumentation, theory is first put into a context (references) which helps to establish a theory because it provides background information and a causal line of thought leading to the theory. Based on this framework, the theory is developed and specific hypotheses are formulated which can then be tested through the research. With the help of empirical data, theory investigates reasons for results or patterns, i.e. it aims at explaining why data is as it is. In order to collect relevant data, lists of variables for the research process have to be developed. However, these only derive from the theory and enable its investigation but they do not construct a theory. Diagrams are used to visualise data and research results of the investigation of the theory. 

• Select a research journal that you believe is relevant for media technology research. The journal should be of high quality, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above. Write a short description of the journal and what kind of research it publishes. 
• Select a research paper that is of high quality and relevant for media technology research. The paper should have been published in a high quality journal, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above. Write a short summary of the paper and provide a critical examination of, for example, its aims, theoretical framing, research method, findings, analysis or implications.
• 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 selected the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication which is a web-based scholarly journal which is published quarterly. It mainly focuses on "communication with computer-based media technologies" and has a two-year impact factor of 3.117 and is ranked 2nd out 76 communication journals (Wiley Online Library). Out of this journal, I read the research paper "News Recommendations from Social Media Opinion Leaders: Effects on Media Trust and Information Seeking" by Turcotte, York, Irving, Scholl and Pingree (available at Wiley Online Library). The paper is about a research on how Facebook users' perception of the trustworthiness and relevance of news media changes in connection with opinion leaders from their network. Following Sutton and Staw's definition of theory and what a research paper should consist of, it can be said that Turcotte et al. published a relevant and valuable paper. They start by giving a background introduction into the topic of decreasing perceived reliability of news media, Social Media behaviour around news and opinion leadership. Concerning opinion leadership, for example, there are two theories - the two-step flow (opinion leaders and opinion followers) and the revised one-step flow (direct effects on isolated receivers). Throughout their research, Turcotte et al. discover that the older theory of the two-step model actually still has more relevance in their context. The authors discuss relevant research and show a lack of exploration of how opinion leadership can influence Facebook users' perception of news sources and their intent to further investigate a topic. From their theory about this, they formulate four hypotheses which they want to test. Turcotte et al. conducted an online survey with a sample of 364 undergraduate students at a U.S. university. They deliberately chose a young sample because previous research suggests that mainly the younger audience moves away from traditional news sources. However, I think that their sample could have been chosen better - it was very homogenous because all participants were from the same university, which the authors also named as a factor in their critical discussion, and most of the participants (80.0%) were female. It is questionable if the research results had been the same with a more diverse sample. The research design, however, was very well though-through and also conducted professionally which helps the relevance of the study. Participants were randomly distributed into an experiment group and a control group and all of them were carefully briefed about the research and even debriefed after the study because the researches had manipulated the participants' Facebook news feed via the social network's API. The evaluation of data and discussion of results - all hypotheses could be verified - was performed well and the researches also discussed further research potential and relevance of their results in the study's specific context. 

All in all, I think that Turcotte et al. conducted a relevant research based on a theory according to Sutton and Staw's definition.

• Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?

Turcotte et al.'s theory is that news media's decreasing popularity can be influenced via Facebook by utilising opinion leadership. This theory and the conducted research are beneficial for traditional media outlets which are facing decreasing readership numbers. Following their theory, the researchers could prove their hypothesis that opinion leadership can positively influence a user's attitude towards news media. The limitations of this theory and the research around it, however, are that they do not aim at investigating the motivation behind this behaviour which makes it harder to draw strategic conclusions from the research results. 

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science (comments)

These are the blogs I commented on for theme 1:

1. http://mediatechmishmash.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_13.html?showComment=1442231672848
2. http://meglia.blogspot.se/2015/09/post-theme-1.html?showComment=1442232798666
3. http://mediafluttery.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-sumtheory-of-knowledge-and.html?showComment=1442233047369
4. http://gamlagreker.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-reflection.html?showComment=1442233455634
5. http://butlikewhyisit.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-reflection.html?showComment=1442233715072
6. http://theoandmeth.blogspot.se/2015/09/reflection-of-theme-1.html?showComment=1442235166483
7. http://bjornsblogggg.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-post-reflection.html?showComment=1442235498248
8. http://remarkableathenianyouth.blogspot.se/2015/09/wrap-up-on-theory-of-knowledge-or-where.html?showComment=1442235752229
9. http://paullinderoth.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_14.html?showComment=1442240060760
10. http://cliodile.blogspot.se/2015/09/after-theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and.html?showComment=1442240270645

Theme 2: Critical media studies (before)

Dialectic of Enlightenment

• What is "Enlightenment"?

Enlightenment refers to an intellectual, philosophical revolution which took place in Western Europe from the mid 17th Century to the late 18th Century. It "swept away the medieval world-view" (cf. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy) and especially enforced reasoned thinking. 
Horkheimer and Adorno initially define the Enlightenment as the "advance of thought" which has "always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters" (Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 1). It is entirely founded on logic and reason and everything that is not logically explainable cannot be real and must be an illusion. 

• What is "Dialectic"?

Dialectic describes the discourse of at least two people who have different points of view on a subject at hand and who want to come to a true conclusion through discussion. Especially Plato in his texts with Socrates (such as Theaetetus) increased the use of dialectic as a method (cf. The University of Chicago). As opposed to a regular discussion or argument, it is important for the dialectic that participants simply discuss with objective feelings from their perspective. It is basically an artificially constructed discussion just to consider different aspects of an issue in the search of a true solution. 

• What is "Nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

Nominalism derives from the latin nomen (meaning "name") and is the philosophical theory that universals come post res, i.e. human-constructed names and descriptions come after the actually existing things or objects (cf. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Universals are rather communicational tools and they artificially group real-life objects or phenomena by putting them in relation with each other.

My interpretation of the relevance of nominalism in this context is that "art" or "culture" are constructed names that once described something of value and quality. Horkheimer and Adorno, however, argue that art and culture have lost their meaning and relevance and only their universal (i.e. what we call them) still exists. 

• What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?

Myths were used by humans to explain the seemingly unexplainable, they invented stories for natural phenomena or other occurrences people did not understand. Enlightenment as a counter-act works against myth to promote logic and reason. While trying this, Horkheimer and Adorno argue, Enlightenment "entangles itself more deeply in mythology" (Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 8). The Enlightenment itself becomes a myth in its attempt to decide over and for people - this is why the two authors think that the movement has failed to achieve what it was aiming for.

The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity

• In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

Karl Marx framed the concept of a superstructure and a substructure to demonstrate how society works. The substructure embodies the economic base of a society which includes its workers and the means of production. This determines the superstructure which contains the rather abstract concepts of a society, such as its ideology, politics and culture (cf. York University). These Marxist concepts are very relevant in Benjamin's discussion of the role of art and art works (part of the superstructure) in relation to their historical context and their means of production (part of the substructure). 

• Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

Walter Benjamin believes that culture can revolutionise society. Especially the availability of culture or art, due to mechanical reproduction "emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual" (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, IV) and allows for more people to be educated through art. However, Benjamin critically observes how contemporary culture does not exploit its potential and rather follows monetary incentives than educational or revolutionary ones - one exception he sees here is Dadaism which creates art for art's sake. Here, Benjamin comes closer to Horkheimer and Adorno's argumentation that contemporary culture is merely driven by entertainment which promises revenue and that it denies its original purpose ("the liquidation of of the traditional value of the cultural heritage", The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, II). Both publications also agree on the fascist context limiting art and culture and abusing it for wrong reasons. 

• Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

We perceive the world within the means of our time - Benjamin talks about this especially in relation to art. One example he gives is the introduction of photography and how it allowed humans to perceive every small movement of the human body while walking, for example, through slow motion (cf. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, XIII). Because we can display reality in a different way, or perception of it changes, as well. Another example is the change from stage performances to films because the step-by-step production of a film, as well as the camera capturing the storyline, distort the reality of the events happening and our perception of it. 

• What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?

The aura, according to Benjamin, is a special abstract spirit connected to objects in the context of their "here and now" and their particular uniqueness. Art works, for example, have a special aura which is always influenced by their history, too - their change of ownership and possible physical sufferings become part of their individual aura. As opposed to natural objects, art objects can lose their aura in the age of mechanical reproduction. The mass re-production of art basically sacrifices the aura for mass-availability for society as a whole and not only individuals.

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science (after lecture + seminar)

This week's lecture and seminar have helped me to clarify a few things I could not really get my head around before. My main issue was the question about a priori and a posteriori knowledge and if one can exist without the other - especially if a priori knowledge or cognition can exist without a posteriori knowledge. Our discussion around this, especially in the seminar, helped me to come to the conclusion that NO, a priori knowledge cannot really exist without a posteriori knowledge. Also, my initial understanding of a priori wasn't completely true and the seminar helped me to understand its true meaning.
However, this was not Kant's focus area anyways. His main goal was to question our intuitively self-evident perception of the world and our knowledge about the world. A priori and a posteriori were only two concepts which he used to describe his thoughts. Nonetheless, solving the a priori/a posteriori issue first helped me to understand his intuition better. 
In the lecture, I also learned about other interesting principles related to Kant, such as analytic and synthetic judgement and scientific objectivity, as well as primary vs. secondary qualities. Also, some hands-on examples, especially in the seminar, made it a lot easier to understand more of Kant - not only the "school book version". One of our examples was what would happen if E.T. came to the earth and pointed at a white rabbit and said a random word, this is a scenario I will definitely keep in my head.

It was also very interesting to have Kant put into a context with other philosophers, from Plato, centuries before him, to, for example, Foucault and Thomas Kuhn who investigated Kant's ideas further and from another angle. Having said that, we did not really discuss Plato's Theaetetus in any detail. On the one hand, I thought that it would have been good to discuss this text a bit more - on the other hand, I felt that I personally, and seemingly also the others in the group, had more problems and unclear thoughts about Kant, so it was good that we split up the time as we did.  

All in all, this week's lecture and seminar have actually provided me with the feeling of having understood at least a bit of Kant's thoughts, even though I had already studied him a bit in high school - but probably only the "school book version". 

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science (before lecture)

In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?

With this part of the second preface, Kant establishes a new perspective on the relation between cognition and objects. Hitherto, existing objects determined human cognition (i.e. knowledge was established a posteriori, based on experience with the object). Kant, however, wants to reverse the relation so that objects have to conform to our cognition (i.e. concepts get established a priori, independent of experience). He suggests that this approach leads to better progress in metaphysics, especially because (during his time) it was a discipline only focusing on rather big and abstract matters, such as being, knowledge and the real nature of things (cf. Encyclopaedia britannica). 

This approach had already been successful before, as Kant's example of Copernicus and the change to the heliocentric system (cf. Encyclopaedia britannica) proves. Kant really wants to encourage what we nowadays call "thinking outside the box" which helps to open our minds and broaden our horizons so that we can approach questions and problems in unconventional ways and thus discover new solutions and answers. 

In my opinion, there needs to be a combination of the two approaches, the relation and influence between cognition and objects or any other abstract form of problem have to be both ways. Copernicus, to stick with Kant's example, could also only be successful with his a priori approach because he already had a posteriori knowledge about the topic. One could even argue that all a priori cognition is based on some kind of a posteriori knowledge about the object or matter at hand or at least about its context. Even if a priori assumptions are made on completely new ideas and abstract concepts (such as metaphysics in Kant's time), they derive from a posteriori knowledge providing information about the in-existence of the idea and on related predecessors leading to this idea. 

At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

In Plato's dialogue between Socrates and Theaetetus, Socrates introduces the thought that the sensory organs - in this case the ears and the eyes - are mere transmitters of sensations and experiences. The difference between hearing or seeing through and not with them emphasises the processing of impressions in "the mind, or whatever we please to call it" (cf. Plato, Theaetetus, p. 329 (epub)) into a cognition or knowledge. If we would hear with our ears, that would mean that the mind would only be a receiver of information and the active part would be the ears' responsibility. Both Socrates and Theaetetus disagree with this because they believe that the senses are instruments of the mind which it uses to perceive experiences in its surroundings. Rephrasing this with Kant's a priori/a posteriori concept, this consequently means that the mind has to rely on the senses, its instruments, for a posteriori cognition which is based on experiences perceived through them. A priori cognition or assumptions, however, (for the moment neglecting my earlier argument of the questionable existence of a priori cognition without a posteriori cognition) originate from the mind and can then be examined with the use of the senses. This combines Plato (or Socrates in his dialogue) and Kant into our modern empirical scientific methods which also aim at proving hypotheses (a priori assumptions originating from the mind) with the help of research methods such as observation (a posteriori cognition perceived through the senses). 

Also the philosophical concept of empiricism ( = "the view that all concepts originate in experience [...] or that all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are justifiable or knowable only through experience" cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica) can be connected to what Socrates suggests, that we perceive our experiences through our sensory instruments and turn them into concepts and beliefs. Empiricism assumes that everything (also Kant's a priori assumptions) derives from experiences previously perceived through the senses, which supports my earlier argument of all a priori cognitions deriving from a posteriori ones. Socrates also argues into that direction in the dialogue as they talk about how the mind can differentiate between sounds and colours which cannot neutrally be perceived by the sensory organs but are established as a posteriori concepts by and in our minds. This can be seen as a first step towards philosophical empiricism. 

To sum it up, I think that Plato and Kant discuss very similar approaches to the relation of objects or experiences and our cognition and the establishment of principles. Nonetheless, Kant takes it a step further. Plato describes, to use Kant's later concept, only the existence of a posteriori cognition. Kant on the other hand also introduces a priori concepts which seem to be a better approach to him. I would argue again that even though there is a definite distinction between the two, a priori knowledge cannot exist without any previous existence of a posteriori knowledge.