Media Use Diary

Media Use Assessment

Media is everywhere, and to a certain extent, the majority of us access and engage with some form of media every day. It would seem that media, in all its shapes and forms, is inescapable, particularly in today’s world where everything is just a click, google or smartphone tap away. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the number of people with access to this information is increasing, but then conversely so too does the time spent accessing it. For a period of ten days I logged my media usage, documenting everything from time spent browsing the internet and watching the news, to every text received and phone call made. I was surprised with the results, for whilst I was aware I used the internet frequently, I had not actually considered it as a percentage of time I spent, and what this meant as a media user.

Below is the complete breakdown of the 10 day usage, note that all figures are time (in minutes), with the exception of texts, emails and phone calls, which have been recorded as the actual number of individual items

		Internet				TV	Audio	Communication
	Video	Shopping	Social Networking	News sites (includes online publications of newspapers and magazines)	Blogs	(also includes watching dvd’s)	Radio, podcasts and ipod usage	Texts & emails sent and received	Phone/skype calls sent and received
14/03/12 (Wednesday)	45	20	120	90	0	180	40	12	1
15/03/12 (Thursday)	60	0	60	80	0	30	0	29	3
16/03/12 (Friday)	40	45	80	90	15	60	30	9	2
17/03/12 (Saturday)	0	0	90	60	0	30	0	36	4
18/03/12 (Sunday)	120	0	80	20	10	30	45	31	2
19/03/12 (Monday)	120	20	80	100	60	60	20	26	1
20/03/12 (Tuesday)	0	20	30	60	0	120	20	32	2
21/03/12 (Wednesday)	20	0	40	90	10	60	30	24	1
22/03/12 (Thursday)	200	15	120	90	0	0	10	17	3
23/03/12 (Friday)	60	20	80	60	15	30	10	19	1
Total:	665	140	780	740	110	600	205	235	20

As can be seen from the table the majority of my media use was through the internet. This is not uncommon, with a significant majority of my fellow Jour 1111 students spending between 1-5 hours on the internet a day, with 29.6% spending 2-3 hours online. I then broke my internet usage down further, to see what actual activities took up the majority of my browsing time.

As can be seen from both the table and the graph, most of my time spent on the internet was on social networking sites, in my case, Facebook. With a total of 665 minutes over the 10 day period this equates to roughly an hour a day. This result is mirrored in the class survey, with 94.7% of respondents having a Facebook account. This is, I believe, indicative of the global popularity of social networking sites, also including Twitter, Tumblr and photo sharing sites such as Instagram. With over 500 million people now part of the Facebook community, it is difficult to deny the impact these sites have had on our lives. I also regularly access Facebook through my Samsung smartphone, and have included this time in the results. This once again is not uncommon, with 77.3% of the cohort owning an internet enabled smartphone, with the most popular application used being Facebook.  I have not created separate divisions within this category as prior to this course I only had a Facebook account and had not yet been introduced to Twitter.

The second and third highest categories are news sites and general browsing, and video. For the purpose of this task I have not included a separate category for academic use of internet as I do not currently have any assignments which require intensive research, so any university based use is included in the general browsing category. I regularly stream video online, usually television programs. This did not rate as high in the survey, with only 36.6% regularly streaming video. The reason I do this so frequently is I am often unable to watch programs when they air, so this is a good way for me to catch up. The video category also encompasses watching films online as well; however I don’t watch them as often as television programs. I also get most of my news from the internet, another reason why this category is so high. As a student not living at home, I don’t really have access to large amounts of print media so rely mainly on internet news sources to keep updated, and large percentage of the group (67.8%) frequently access online news. This is also why I have not included a separate print category in the overall diary.  

I have chosen to include a separate category for online shopping, for whilst spending significantly less time on this than other categories, it still takes up time on the internet. I prefer the convenience of online shopping, and now with many sites offering free delivery, it is greatly beneficial for cash and time poor students.

I recently started my first blog as part of the jour1111 course, thus explaining why blogging doesn’t take up a high percentage of my time. I am not alone in this instance, with only 32.4% of the cohort reading blogs regularly. Since beginning the course, most of my time spent on blogs has been looking at other jour1111 students’, as well as updating my own.

Here is a comparative graph illustrating the time on the internet as compared to other forms of media:

As can be seen from the graph, television and audio only make up a small percentage of my media use. This is also in keeping with the rest of the class, as my total television time of 600 minutes equates to an hour a day over the 10 day period, and the majority of students, 29.9%, watching 1-2 hours of television each day. If you were to include television online however, my number would be much higher, but I have chosen to categorise that as internet usage.

In the audio category I have combined radio and ipod usage. As can be seen I am not a heavy ipod user, nor do I frequently listen to the radio. The only time I do listen to the radio is in the car, but as I am a frequent user of public transport, it is really only when I am driving to work that I listen. This is in keeping with the class results, as 82.9% listen to the radio in the car, and 53.9% listen to it for less than an hour a day.

I believe that my mobile use is neither excessive nor limited, and I feel as though my use is average for someone of my age. I have chosen not to graph my mobile usage in comparison to other media as it is measured in different values and the final data presented would not be accurate.  

In conclusion, I was rather surprised with the outcome of this exercise. I did not consider myself to be a large media user, as I had previously considered media to be limited to newspapers, magazines and television. When broken down though, it appears that my reliance on the internet results in a large amount of media consumption. My media use does vary from day to day, dependent on various factors, such as when I drive my car, or when I am not physically at university. Overall I believe that this study has been an interesting way to examine our use of media in the ever changing technological age.

Lecture 3

Lecture 3

Today’s lecture was delivered by guest speaker Skye Doherty and I have to say, it was very interesting to hear from someone who has had such a long and varied career. Ms Doherty obviously knows her stuff, especially when it comes to text based journalism, the topic of the third lecture. Here she introduced us to what could be considered the ‘golden rule’ of basic news writing, the inverted pyramid. The crux of the pyramid is that the most important and newsworthy info goes at the top, and becomes the lead of the story, and the other details flesh out the rest of the piece. I found this diagram which illustrates this premise:

She also went into the different types of text, such as online text, and into the more complex meta tagging (which I am still trying to figure out). She also explained the importance of ensuring your story is appropriate to the textual format, i.e suitable for newspaper or online publications.

Rather than go as in depth into the lecture as I did in the last post, I thought I would change tact slightly. We have been required to keep a media diary, and somewhat prompted by this I began searching for articles, not necessarily about media from a journalistic perspective, but rather as an everyday consumer.  I should probably make the point now that I love pop culture. Anything from television, movies, music, fashion, literature, I love them all. And I especially love looking at how they reflect our culture. With that in mind I stumbled across this article in the online edition of Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/04/revenge-modern-family-tv-class-warfare

Up until now I had never really considered the amount of television that revolves around the upper echelons of society. But sure enough, one look at the shows screening, streaming and winning ratings, and quite a number of them feature those who are lucky enough to be in the upper socio economic bracket. Revenge, as mentioned in the Vanity Fair article, predominantly revolves around the lives and antics of the residents of the Hamptons, a known hideout of the sometimes famous and always rich. Gossip Girl too falls into this category, with the young Manhattanites wearing more designer goods and splashing more cash than I could ever dream of. This is not to say that all television characters fall into the super-rich. As mentioned in the article however, even in Modern Family, which we all like to think is a fairly exaggerated, yet somehow eerily accurate depiction of a suburban family, the characters live in large, expensively furnished homes. Television is ultimately a form of entertainment, and the shows we watch reflect what we find engaging. So perhaps this attraction to the lives and losses of the upper classes reflects the longing of a society still reeling from a financial crisis. Or maybe we just like watching pretty people with lots of money do things we never can.   

Lecture 2

The focus of lecture 2 was on web iterations and the shifts in media with regards to the ever omnipresent internet. The phrase new media was thrown around a lot, as was its veteran counterpart, old media. It would appear that old media (newspapers, magazines and television) is dying, and making way for the new media (the user driven social networks, twitter, facebook, even news websites). The explanation of different web iterations, what I suppose you could crudely refer to as levels of the internet, was a topic which I was very unfamiliar with. Essentially, Web 1.0 is rather basic, it is largely advertiser friendly and largely content based, allowing very little interaction with its users. Web 2.0 is the social media. In this iteration, ‘the user acts as a hybrid user/producer…virtually through the production process’ (Axel Bruns 2005, QUT). Web 3.0 is the latest to emerge and it referred to as the semantic web. It will allow for more specific news to be delivered to users and has the potential for ‘hyperlocalisation’. That is to say rather than being specific to the greater Brisbane region, you can go that step further and have specific content delivered regarding your suburb.  Here is a link, whilst being slightly old, explains the concept pretty well: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/464-Basic-Definitions-Web-1-0-Web-2-0-Web-3-0

All this talk of new media got me thinking though. When can we actually expect the death of old media? When will the morning ritual of reading the arts section over breakfast become a relic of a bygone era? I concede that I haven’t bought a newspaper in over a week, but I honestly would lament the passing of the broadsheet. To be honest, I would even miss the tabloids for that matter. I think my love of newspapers and magazines stems from my parents. They have two papers delivered every morning, one local, the other a national broadsheet. And whilst I have left home and don’t have the luxury of a paper every day, I still appreciate being able to sit down on a Saturday afternoon and read the Good Weekend magazine in the Sydney Morning Herald. The converse of this though, is that it is important to keep on top of this technological revolution, and supply information in the form the consumers want it. Business moguls have been attempting for some time to come up with a strategy that will do exactly that, whilst still keeping the industry afloat. News Corporation have become one of the first newspaper publishers to introduce the ‘paywall’, a system whereby the user must pay to access information from a specific publication. I have to say I am not as opposed to this idea as some. Whilst I don’t believe that all internet news should be provided at a premium, as it currently stands, if you want a more in depth report or features, you go and buy a newspaper. This is not dissimilar to the paywall system slowly being put in place by publications across the internet. Apologies for the lengthy post, it is a rather thought provoking topic. Also, here are some links I found which expand on the issue and examine it from different perspectives.

http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/441/the-pulitzer-prizes-who-killed-journalism.html

http://www.smh.com.au/business/rumours-of-the-death-of-old-media-greatly-exaggerated-20120209-1rwxl.html

Lecture 1

So I realise that I am a bit behind on the whole blogging front, but to be completely honest, this whole social media thing is a bit daunting to a technophobe like myself. That's not to say I am living in the dark ages. I have in fact embraced the smart phone, the wonders of online shopping, and regularly check my Facebook. But when it was suggested that we keep constantly updated on the news via twitter, and regularly blog and share with our peers, needless to say, I had a mini freak out. So only three weeks late (due to recovery time from aforementioned mini freak out), here are my thoughts on the first lecture of Jour1111.

I am not going to lie, I don't know if I want to be a journalist. I just know that I am not very good at maths and that I am too lazy to do law. So with this somewhat blasé attitude I strolled into the first lecture, only to be greeted with a big projection of the phrase "YOU are the journalist". The fact that the 'you' of that sentence was written in red, and everyone was writing it down, made me want to cut my losses and just get a Boost Juice from the union building. But I persevered, and upon seeing the various quotes about journalism as a concept and the ideology behind it, I began to think maybe the regular sized mango tango crush I was thinking about only moments before could wait. The quote that resonated with me the most was the following: 'I became a journalist to come as close as possible to the heart of the world.' Henry R. Luce, American Publisher & Editor. Having lived overseas, even if only for a brief period of time, I learned that there are things happening everywhere, everyday. And I want to know what they are, maybe I even want to tell people what they are. I left the lecture with a few new ideas and something of a smile on my face. Smiling mainly because there was not a single mathematic equation in sight.