For my first JOUR1111 assessment I was required to document
my media usage over ten days between Friday 3rd August and Sunday 12th
August. Doing so proved to be quite a
complicated task as media is available through so many different avenues
nowadays, whether it is internet, newspapers, phone applications, radio or
television. It was also interesting to compare my usage to the rest of the
JOURN1111 students in the survey collated by our lecturer Bruce Redman. From my own findings it appears that most of
my consumption occurs online while more traditional outlets such as newspapers
or radio seem to be accessed in more sparing amounts.
It is difficult to specifically document online media use
because, with me, there is a lot of multi-tasking occurring. For example, while
signed into Facebook, I browse the ABC website for news, check my e-mail in
Windows Live Mail, torrent files in UTorrent, and listen to music on either
Spotify or iTunes. Complex right? Facebook keeps me updated with what is
happening in my social circle, while sites such as ABC, Courier Mail and Crikey
provide me with all the local and international news I need. I find The Drum, on the ABC website, an
invaluable source for reading the opinions of Australia’s most respected
journalists. I think this activity
reflects my prerogative to find news that is balanced, and journalism that is
conducted with integrity; something which is not seen enough in the days of
right-leaning Murdoch-run sites such as The Daily Telegraph. Sundays are the
one day I buy print newpaper as it gives a breakdown of the week’s news and
also has a great TV guide. I found a majority of the survey respondents were
similar to myself, with 39 percent listing online newspapers as their common
source of news, compared to 3.6 percent who still bought hard copies.
When I am not getting my news, Youtube remains a great site
for watching clips, discovering music, and watching QI episodes. I also enjoy
visiting the ABC Iview to stream recently aired programs (in case you can’t
tell I am an ABC junkie). It wouldn’t be
a stretch to say that watching streamed programs take up as much time for me
as accessing Facebook. Startlingly, only 6.7 percent of the survey participants
listed ‘streaming TV programs’ as an online priority; this surprised me
immensely as my perception was that online streaming had become more popular
than regular TV viewing.
On reflection, I think my log reflects that my news
consumption is garnered from a variety of different sources, not just internet.
Morning drives through peak hour traffic are my chance to listen to talkback
radio (612AM or 792AM), while in the evenings I watch TV programs such as The
Drum, ABC news, and 7.30. During breaks at
work I will use phone applications such as Spotify, news/weather updates, Facebook,
and select educational games. The fact that I
haven’t caught on to Tumblr or Instagram (two high polling choices in the
survey) reflects my willingness to keep things simple on my phone.
So far I have only mentioned my intake of media, but what about
my output? Phone calls and texting for me take up a fairly modest amount of
time, with around 7 or 8 texts sent on average (or roughly 10-15 mins spent composing
these a day). My phone call logs varied dramatically depending on whether I was
caught with a long conservation with a friend or just making a brief call. When
I am being creative at home I use the program Protools to record music from my keyboard,
as well as Kontakt software to produce synthesised sounds. Once this is completed I bounce the tracks to
mp3 and upload to Soundcloud to share with friends or band members. This is not
a daily task but the graph displays that 4 recording sessions occurred over those
10 days. As I don’t operate a blog
outside of the one set up for this course, that really sums up the extent of my
media output. I found it refreshing that
most of the JOURN1111 students were in a similar boat to me in that they didn’t
use a blog. I was certain that the popularity of Facebook/Twitter meant that every
man and his dog had a blog nowadays.
It would seem my demographic (26 to 30 years) is in a very
slim minority (1.2%) compared to the majority of students who are under 25. While I don’t think this is a particularly big
age gap, it may mean that I am more conservative in the way I approach media (compared
to those who have had the internet around for as long as they can remember). I
am definitely less willing to try new and exciting apps (Instagram, Tumblr,
Pinterest), or to indulge in updating my status constantly on Twitter, or being
technologically savvy and uploading videos of myself on YouTube. However, I do
believe my behaviour generally correlates with most of the other respondents with
regards to the way that I access news, and use the internet to perform everyday
tasks such as banking, mail, and online shopping. Media has become so much more diverse and
available in the present day and never has it been easier to stay engaged with the
rest of the world!
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