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.