Seminar 6

During the last seminar of the course we discussed what a case study is. Leif talked about two examples of case studies. He mentioned the police and said that solving a crime could be seen as a case study. He also mentioned doctors as an example, he said that examining and treating a sick person could be seen as a case study (since the symptoms are tied to one person).

Most interesting was when Leif said that a case study is when observing an object/a phenomena that already exists. The object or phenomena that you're observing isn't created by your study, and that defines the case study. You want to understand an event, a patient, a criminal etc. to see why things happen as they do. You do not create methods in order to find new data is my understanding of this, but instead you analyze data from previous, similar cases in order to further understand a specific phenomena. Like Haibo said in his lecture, you should put more time and effort into defining the actual problem instead of designing methods for solving it (since you don't know what you're actually solving if you don't know what problem you've got).

Another thing we discussed, which I agree with, is the importance of researchers with different academic backgrounds in a case study. It is easy to get caught up in a certain way of thinking if your drilled like that. Take us engineers as an example, it's to always think in terms of right and wrong, black and white since that is our background (lots of math, I know). But that way of approaching a problem isn't always plausible, and even if you think that you've solved the problem you still have to convince other people (with different kinds of backgrounds) that your solution is "the right one".

It was a bit confusing, the definition of a case study, but I still think I got a little bit wiser in the field of case studies.

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

I've chosen the article "Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended Consequences" from the journal of computer mediated communication. 

1. Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
   In this article the researchers combine a quantitative method with a qualitative one. Like I wrote in my last text, this is exactly what we did in our exam assignment earlier this spring. Our paper was about what makes university students click/ignore political material on Facebook. At first we conducted a quantitative survey with, I think, 68 persons and then we ask people to volunteer for a smaller, qualitative study in which 10 students participated. In this study we were able to go deeper and ask questions about the empirical patters that we've discovered in our survey. Even though this article is about a different matter it's still the same design of their method as our. First a survey with a bigger group of people (quantitative) and then deeper, follow-up questions for a smaller group on these results (qualitative). The benefit of combining the two methods is to first locate what is actually happening and then why these things happen. You can see how people in general act about a certain matter through a survey and then actually understand why they act that way, which makes it possible to gain deeper understanding of a problem.
2. What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
   Not that much that I didn't already know I would say. What did differ in their way of conducting their qualitative interviews compared to our interviews is in the way they categorized their answers."(A) Salience—interesting or unusual expressions that indicate significance and/or emotional involvement; (B) metaphors, analogies, and similes—particularly with respect to how interviewees conceptualize facebook and their use of it; (C) ellipses and allusions—particularly implicit or indirect reference to connotations and background knowledge; (D) moral judgments and value statements."
   
   I think it's an interesting way of categorizing the participants answers, we thought about this when we were doing our study but we never actually categorized them in anyway. We tried to see if some answers were more common among our participants and then we chose a couple of quotes that we thought was interesting and differed from others. But this way of categorizing is a way better way to present the contained data.
3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?
   The biggest problem in combining a quantitative method with a qualitative one is generalizing I would say. Since they are trying to find out why people in their study answered like they did in the survey it's easy to take the answers from the qualitative interviews and just apply them to all of the answers of the survey when in fact, these answers are only applicable on the people participating in the qualitative study. It's easy, and tempting, to generalize and apply findings from the qualitative study on the quantitative one since it's easier to draw conclusions then.

The article I've chosen for the second task is called "Interactivity in the daily routines of online newsrooms: Dealing with an uncomfortable myth" and was published in the Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication.

1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.
   A case study is a research method aiming at gaining deeper knowledge of the area that you're studying. Usually you focus on one or two cases in order to gain deeper and more detailed knowledge than you could through lets say a survey. Case studies are usually carried out in an empirical way where you collect data by going out "in reality" and collect data.
2. Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.
   In the beginning of the paper the authors explains their aim of the paper and give some context to the reader. They conduct a quite comprehensive literature review in order to explain a lot of expressions and myths regarding online journalism. The authors propose that there is a myth among journalists regarding interactivity in online journalism. After they've conducted the literature review as a way of explaining their aim they move on to their case study. They study four news papers websites and they have chosen four websites are part of the same European regional media system, Catalonia, and are devoted to general interest news of the region. The reason for choosing the european region is that the authors says that there are a lot of studies done in the US about this field but not in Europe. They want to encourage other researchers to pursue its approach, as it helps in tracing the diversity and commonalities in the development of the Internet as a news medium.
   Observations of these newspapers and their work routines were conducted in 2003, which feels a bit old of you ask me since the paper is written 5 years later and knowing how much and fast the digital media industry is changing I think that these observations feel rather old. The author does how ever in a very consistent way link back to the myths that he talks about in the literature review which is good. A strength in the data collection though is that they combine their observations with a lot of qualitative interviews which makes the data feel more valid, if it's a bit old.
   At the end of the paper in the discussion I think that they link nicely with earlier, similar literature. They compare the previous US studies with this European study and say that even though there are some cultural differences there are a lot of equal factors to these studies when it comes to forming strategies of online newspapers and the interactivity of them.
   
   Overall a well executed study even though I think that they should have mentioned a bit about how the data used in the case studies could be a bit out-of-date considering how fast things actually changes in this business these days.
3. 

Theme 5: reflection

Today at the lecture, Sallnäs talked a lot about her research in the field of haptic collaborative interfaces. To be honest, I have a hard time seeing the point of this lecture in this course. Since the lecture was very focused on her research, which to me wasn't that appealing to be honest, I had a little bit of trouble to stay focused during the whole session.

What I did pick up was when she talked about the so called white spots, which could be explained as an area that you're no that familiar with. What Sallnäs said when she mentioned this was that when you're doing research in an area that you're not that familiar with you should go with a qualitative method rather than a quantitative one.

Like I said in the beginning I had a hard time to actually see the point of this lecture since I think it was mainly aimed at research in the haptic field. I think that the quantitative methods kind of fell out from the agenda.

Theme 5: Design research

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?
   After reading Mr Li and his colleagues study I think that are a couple of different things that has to be considered when evaluating media technology. First of all the technology itself has to be evaluated of course. How good is the technology? Does it fulfill its purpose? What is its purpose? Also, since almost all media technology today is connected to the Internet, you have to think about what network your technology is aiming at. You also have to take into consideration the people using/supposed to use the technology. How do they experience the technology? How will it affect them and their lives? Are people ready for this technology or will it need regulations such as laws and user restrictions? In the article they use the ISO recommendations for usability (which is defined as effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction) in order to evaluate the usability of their media technology.
2. What role will prototypes play in research?
   A rather big role I think since today you can construct very realistic prototypes through either CAD-software or by the help of 3D-printers. I think that the better and more powerful tools we gain access to, when talking in terms of constructing prototypes, the more picky are people going to be. They want things that feels real and looks real, they don't just want it to be a picture inside their head. Like Haibo Li and his colleagues said in their conclusion (who were using a rather simple prototype in their study), "people participating in the study were interested in their product but the test prototype alone wasn't enough to make the users willing to buy it".
3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
   I think that the most obvious reason would be to actually get people interested in investing money into an idea/concept. If you're having trouble finding people interested in an invention then you could break down the problem into smaller pieces, creating a proof of concept prototype, showing that your concept actually work so that they won't have to buy the pig in a poke. If you show people that your proof of concept prototype work then they might be willing to invest enough for you to create an actual prototype.
4. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
   I would say that the biggest limitation within a prototype is the risk of locking someone in to an idea of how something should look like. The more complex and real a prototype can look like the harder will it be to determine prototype from an actual product and I think that there's a risk of locking people in to a prototype. With more primitive sketches, thoughts and ideas you're more open to how the final product should look like, leaving more up to fantasy.One of the main characteristics of a prototype I would say is that it's main purpose is to test the concept/idea that you've come up with. To actually see if the concept looks like/works like you want it do in real life.
5. How can design research be communicated/presented?
   Mainly through sketches, mock-ups and diagrams. In some kind of illustrated way I think without too much text so that the viewer has to think for him-/herself. Today you also have the choice of rendering illustrations and movies on your computer of course which is also an high-fidelity alternative. But then again I would say that the low fidelity sketches and mock-ups has it pros as well, leaving more to imagination.

How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?

When in a collaborative setting you have multiple (at least two, kind of obvious) persons that can interact and share experiences with each other, which would be the biggest difference to a single user setting I suppose. The biggest difference in the results obtained I guess would be that in the case of collaborative settings the participants are able to influence each other, which could change the results quite severely. In single user settings you get more individualized results but then again if you're testing something that is supposed to be used in groups then these results could get quite misleading.

How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?

This spring when we wrote our exam assignment we combined a quantitative method with a qualitative method. The biggest benefit with this was that we could first analyze the empirical patterns from our quantitative method and then shape our qualitative study after the results from quantitative study in order to conduct a deeper analysis of the empirical patterns that we found. In our qualitative study we were able to further understand why the participants acted like they did in our quantitative study.

How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?

The answer to this question isn't that different to the previous question, they complement each other. You use an objective method to understand what is happening and then the subjective method to understand why it is happening.

Seminar 4

This seminar wasn't actually called a seminar, it was called a workshop and the design of it was a bit different to the previous seminars. We were two groups in one this time, which caused a bit of chaos but worked out okay in the end I think. During the workshop we discussed quantitative methods vs. qualitative methods and their pros and cons. This weeks' text, the one written by Olle Bälter and colleagues, was about a quantitative study which illustrated very well the problems that can occur in such a study.

There are always a risk of dropouts in big surveys since people might feel like "they are just a drop in the ocean". During the seminar Olle talked about a couple of steps that could/should use in order to prevent the dropouts actually dropping out. It was a chain of communication in which you should start out by inviting people to your survey through mail (actual mail, not e-mail) in which you either include a paper survey or a password and a url were they can conduct the study online. After that, for those that didn't participate, you should remind them through mail followed by a call and perhaps a last letter. The key to all of this, no matter in which order you conduct these steps, is to treat these people with respect and don't try to force them into anything.

Another tip is to construct the survey in a way were the participants actually gain something from it. For example, Olle showed us a survey from Karolinska Institutet which was about food and health, and in the survey you could type in your length and weight and then get your BMI. And with your BMI a text that said somethings about it to keep the participant interested in the survey.

I think that the last thing, the interactive survey, shows a good example of how you can benefit from conducting studies on a digital platform instead of on paper. (Other than just the distribution part). A simple way of actually "tricking" people into a survey. This was the most interesting epiphany from this weeks theme I would say.

Theme 4: Quantitative research

I've chosen an article called The Benefits of Facebook "Friends": Social capital and College students use of online social network sites which was published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

1. Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
   The quantitative method used in this article was a survey. The survey was sent out to 800 random students at Michigan State University and there were 286 people who responded to the survey. The benefits of this survey is that the researcher reaches a quite significant number of Facebook users in a quite simple way (all they have to do is compose the survey and send out an e-mail). There is also a benefit in the fact that you can compare different groups of people within the study (e.g. boys and girls, frequent users and infrequent users etc.) and see if their results differ and then further analyze why you think it differs. The limitations is that the questions in the survey locks the participants in to certain answers, since the questions come with pre-written answers that the participants choose from. Depending on how you write the questions you might get different results in the study.
   
2. What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
   To be honest, not that much that I didn't already know. Since we conducted a quantitative method in our "kandidatexamensjobb" this spring I think this article was in a way quite similar to our study. Our study was about what makes college students click/ignore political content in their Facebook feeds and we also conducted a survey with a lot of pre-written answers to choose from.
   
   
3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?
   One of the problems I think with this study is that they actually pay the participants (a small amount, but still) which could mean that they are participating for another reason than the study itself. And another thing, even though the question was about how college students could benefit their social capital from use of online social networks, I still think it would've been interesting to compare these users with the one's who's not using online social networks. In the survey there are 94% of the people who are using Facebook which means there aren't that many to compare the results to. But then again, this has nothing to do with their method, just their selection. 

1. Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?
   One of the limitations of using quantitative methods is that you're highly dependent on how willing the participants is to actually fulfill the study. There is a high risk of people thinking "it doesn't matter if I drop out, there still lots of others participating in the study so I won't make a difference anyway". Another limitation would be that your results are highly dependent on the selection of people that chooses to participate in your study. Why did they choose to participate while the other did not? Does these reasons affect our results and would we've gotten a different result if the one's that choose not to participate would have participated instead? A benefit of the quantitative methods is that you get to look at your problem in a wider perspective than in a qualitative study, showing how a big group of people react to something instead of rather the individual. It's also of course quicker than a qualitative study. You can conduct a survey for instance which is quite quick and reaches lots of people. This on the other hand puts more pressure on the researchers since they have to be more careful about how they write their questions.
   
   
2. Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?
   The most obvious limitation of a qualitative method would be the time aspect. It's usually more time consuming than a quantitative method. But on the other hand you get more individualized data that usually reflects the individuals actual thoughts on a study better than in a quantitative one.
   Another limitation is that you're even more dependent on the people participating the study than in a quantitative one since the answers are much more individualized.

Seminar 3

Even though this weeks subject was easier to relate to I think that the seminar was a bit confusing to me. Interesting but a little bit hard to grasp. I got the part where we said that theory is a set of propositions but wasn't as sure about the part where we said that a hypothesis could be turned into a theory. Or, I understand that you are able to do this, but I forgot to ask if data alone from an empirical study is enough to convert a hypothesis to a theory. Since I read in this week's articles that data is one of the things you most commonly mistake for being theory I wonder what it actually takes to turn an hypothesis into a theory.

Thinking about my article, I still think as I wrote before the seminar that the whole article would have been more interesting if it would have been put into a bigger context. Like we discussed in the seminar, the research was quite narrow and it would have been much more interesting to see how people would be affected by these results rather than the results itself.

After this week I think it's easier to understand what is not theory than what actually is. The five things that Sutton & Staw mentioned in their paper (references, data, list of variables, diagrams and hypothesis) actually made sense when you read them one by one. It made sense that none of these alone could prove a theory but I guess a lot of people want them to do that because it's easier to jump to conclusions than actually proving them. You have to look at the whole picture and rather answer why the data showed these empirical patterns? Why these references are relative to your work. That is the only way to come close to something that is called theory I guess.

Seminar 2

I feel like this weeks' articles was perhaps a little bit easier to relate to since they were more obviously related to our field, media technology. I felt that the articles, or rather the authors of the articles, spun on Kants' perspectives from last week. Just like the both articles argues, I think it is important as a civil engineer to question the technology used in media and how it relates to, for instance politics. We compared the natural and the historical perceptions and asked the question: is it able to write from a truly objective perspective? I don't think so since we're all raised with different values and have different perceptions of the world. I think that it's more important to acknowledge the perspective that you're writing from in order to make people understand the way you see the world.

At the seminar we talked about Marx and his thoughts about society, which Benjamin discusses in his text. We talked about the two concepts of superstructure and substructure and how Benjamin applied this on to the field of culture/media technology. We interpreted this as substructure could be seen as the technology itself, for instance a camera, and the superstructure would then be the people using the technology and interpreting all the cultural material, for instance pictures. The substructure could also be seen as our cultural assessments. We mentioned a suiting quote from Marx on this matter:
"It is not our values that controls the way we work. It is the way we work that controls the way we think." - Marx.

Another thing we discussed was realism contra nominalism. Platos' cave parabel is a way of explaining the realism, where the fire is the world of ideas and the shadows on the wall is the world of impressions. The nominalism kills this idea of the world of ideas, it states that it's only a nomina (a name) and that the world of impressions is the only existing world. That theory has to adapt to our impressions, not the other way around. Adorno and Horkheimer are positive to the nominalism but they think that it tendens to surpress existing systems.

According to me I would say that the nominalism doesn't enhance any visions, since it doesn't acknowledge the world of ideas. There are some ideas, like the idea of every human beings equal value, that can't be proven in an empirical study and doesn't exist other than in our minds. If we would go by Darwins' theory, the strong one's right over the weak, then the world would be a much different place.

Theme 3

Concerning the journal, I've chosen one called Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The journal publishes research about communication via computer-based technologies. It publishes only original research articles or meta-analyses of prior research.

The title of the paper that I've chosen is Channeling Science Information Seekers' Attention? A Content Analysis of Top-Ranked vs. Lower-Ranked Sites in Google. It was published in 2013 in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The thesis in this articles' is about how Googles' search engine favor large and popular websites while discriminating smaller sites. The authors conducted a content analysis through the search engine and the subject that they chose as searching phrase was nanotechnology. They are trying to find out trends of online information regarding this subject and if Google has been promoting certain types of content. The reason for choosing nanotechnology as search phrase is since it has provided both significant social benefits but also potential risks so therefore it's a rather debated matter.

I would say that the research method in the article is solid and thorough. Their results shows that Google increases the visibility of popular websites. But I think that they could have expanded their horizons a bit and put their results in a bigger perspective. In the beginning of the paper they talk about "a majority of users tend to regard search engines as an ‘‘unbiased and fair source of information,’’ especially in comparison to traditional mass media". But they never come back to this matter, they never involve any users which is a shame since I think that is the most interesting part of this study. What do the users actually think of this study? What if the crowd, or "the majority of users", actually think that search engines way of showing top ranked, popular sites first is considered a fair source of information and not biased? (Since, in a way, it's showing what reflects the publics' searches, is that then an unbiased way of displaying the information?)

Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is and what theory is not.
To try and explain it as briefly as possible what theory is I would like to use a quote from Sutton and Staw's paper (What theory is not): "Theory is the answer to queries of why".
What they mean by this is that there are a lot of parts in an article that are commonly mistaken for being theory. The five parts most commonly mistaken for theory is by their means: references, data, lists of variables and constructs, diagrams and hypotheses. Take data for instance, the data from an empirical study is in itself not theory. Data is what kind of empirical patterns that the study has shown. Theory is why this empirical pattern has occurred.

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 place the paper that I've chosen under theory type 2. "Explanation - Says what is, how, why, when, and where. The theory provides explanations but does not aim to predict with any precision. There are no testable propositions." The authors explain the phenomena and the method used in the study. They also talk about how there is a lack of earlier empirical studies in this matter, which is why they are conducting it. Their analysis is merely about the data that they've obtained and they do not put it in a bigger perspective.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?
The benefit of using this theory would be that it's a simpler way of answering a narrower problem. If you have a a statement that is already being used almost as a "consensus" in earlier studies but haven't really been proven properly in any of them then this is a good theory type to use. What it lacks is the possibility to put the results of the study in a broader perspective, not just explain why we found these results but also what they mean.

Theory 2: Critical media studies

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment

a. What is "Enlightenment"?
Enlightenment is a set of ideas meant to liberate the human mind and consciousness. Also it is aimed at distinguishing reason from myth in order to free man from authority and mysticism.

b. What is "dialectic"?

It is a way of judging what opinon is the most truthful through sophisticated discussions and weighting facts against each other. When faced with two different opinions in an argument among two groups, or individuals, the groups can weight the pros and cons against each other and by sorting out what is not true they can come up with what instead is true.
c. What is "nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?
Nominalism makes a distinction between concrete objects and abstract objects. It dismisses abstract objects and general ideas as myths or as names without meaning. In this context, since we're also dealing with the term enlightenment, it is important to make a distinction between what is real and what is myth in this world.

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

Adorno and Horkheimer's argues that all knowledge before the enlightenment could be considered as myth. People used to make up stories, or myths, to explain things that they didn't know how else to explain or understand. The enlightenment tries to puncture these myths with scientific knowledge instead.

2. "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity"

a. 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?

The Superstructure is a structure that takes place much slower than the substructure. The substructure can be seen as the general production and the superstructure the production of culture. This meaning that the ways of producing culture is evolving slower than the way we re-produce that culture.

b. 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?
Benjamin talks about the camera as an example in this matter. He means that when the camera came into the world it changed the way of producing culture from something unique into something mass-produced. The classical painting had lost it's "aura" according to Benjamin. He argues of the negative effects that the technical evolution (and the mass-production that followed from it) has on the way of producing and even looking upon culture. Adorno and Horkheimer on the other hand feels more positive to this technical evolution and the effects that it has for the broader masses (spreading knowledge and culture).

c. 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).

He means that we can percept things either in a natural way, that is through our senses and experiences. Or these perceptions can be experienced and determined by previous, historical events which we are raised and told about.

The historical example that Benjamin writes about is the late Roman art industry, which developed in the fifth century and changed the way that the romans perceived art.

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

He describes the term aura, concerning the natural objects, as 'the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be'. As an example he refers to while looking mountains in the distant horizon, we're able to feel the aura from those mountains even though they're far off.

Concerning the art objects Benjamin talks about an ancient statue of Venus, which originally was looked upon with veneration by the Greeks. Later on however, in the middle age, the clerics would look upon it as an ominous idol. He means that even though they perceived the statue in different ways, they were both confronted with the uniqueness from it. 

Seminar 1

Seminar 1

As preparation for the first seminar I read a couple of other peoples blogs in order to see how their interpretations of the two questions differed from my own. I haven't read any philosophy before so it takes some time to wrap one's head around this new way of thinking (or at least new for an engineers student).

Since the Kant text was written in quite complex language I think that the lecture we had this monday was good for clearing up the bigger picture and meaning of his text. A quote that stuck was this one:

An objective view of the world would be the view from nowhere.

During the lecture Johan talked about the teleological worldview in which the world is explained in reasons (e.g. I drink because I'm thirsty) and the mechanical worldview in which the world is as it is in itself (e.g. I drink because my body needs water in order to function). Also he explained the difference between primary qualities (or absolute qualities) and secondary qualities. The first one are qualities in objects that would exist even without experiencing creatures, e.g. size, weight and motion. The second one are qualities in objects that couldn't exist without experiencing creatures, e.g. smell, taste and warmth. In order to fully see objects and the world as it actually is we would need to take a step out of ourselves and not describe the world out of our own experiences. To take the view from nowhere.

But since we in fact are experiencing creatures and not God I don't think we're able to actually take the view from nowhere. I think that, as we discussed in the seminar, our experiences and perceptions has to talk to us, has to mean something in order for us to be able to understand and know the world. Without ways of understanding and perceiving the world, faculties of knowledge, like time and space it would all just be a bundle of impressions. I think, like Socrates said, that we all see the world through these forms (time and space) and not with them. I don't know whether that is true knowledge of the world or not but I think it's the only way for us to make some sense of all the impressions that we're faced with through our lives.

Theme 1 - Theory of knowledge and theory of science

Question 1
"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?

The metaphysics contains questions about matters like time and room. Since time and room is arbitrarily objects it is something that we percept through our experiences and earlier peoples definitions. But in order to percept time and room in a different way we need to question just that, how we see and percept time and room. The author means that time and room (or any kind of object that we're trying to understand) must be perceived/studied through the object instead rather than through ourselves. That in order to understand objects we can not simply study them through our own eyes, we need to see ourselves through the objects eyes in order to understand the object. Take the sun as an example, for hundreds of years humans were under the impression that the sun was moving around the earth. It wasn't until Copernicus came along and saw the matter from the opposite perspective, the sun's, that we could understand that it was the other way around.

Question 2
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?

Socrates asks the question whether we know everything we see and hear or not. He takes an example of hearing someone speaking a foreign language, which you haven't learn to understand, do you then not hear? Or reading a letter in the same foreign language, do you then not see the letters of which you can't understand?

As an oppose to this argument Theaetetus then answers that we do see and know the figures and colours of the foreign letter, even though we can't read it. Also that we do hear and know the intonation of the foreign language, even thought we can't understand it. He means that just because we see and hear these things, that does not mean that we know or understand these things.

As an interpretation of Socrates argument, we do see and hear things with our eyes and ears. But they are just tools, tools for gathering of information. Information that needs to be processed and interpreted through our eyes and ears by the help of our minds. Because without the mind it is all just imperceivable information.

And in what way is it correct to say that Soctrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

The empiricism emphasizes evidence, and that this evidence should be obtained through experiments and observations. Since we can't obtain evidence of knowledge by just our own seeing and hearing, since we humans perceive things differently, we need impartial perceptions through a lot of observations and empirical studies in order to obtain knowledge. If you were to obtain knowledge from just one single person then you could arguably say that you see and hear with your eyes and ears. But since we humans perceive things different we need a lot of persons seeing and hearing the same things in order to know that we see and hear the same things. By collecting a lot of impartial observations we obtain knowledge from seeing and hearing through our eyes and ears.