Media Use Diary –
JOUR1111 – Karl Anderson (s4288383)
|
Date
|
Facebook/
Twitter
|
Book
|
TV
|
Radio
|
Movies
|
Newspaper
|
Internet Browsing
|
Music
|
|
19/3/2012
|
5
|
1
|
0
|
1
|
3
|
1
|
3
|
5
|
|
20/3/2012
|
5
|
2
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
5
|
|
21/3/2012
|
3
|
0
|
1
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
4
|
|
22/3/2012
|
4
|
0
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
1
|
3
|
6
|
|
23/3/2012
|
5
|
1
|
0
|
2
|
4
|
0
|
2
|
6
|
|
24/3/2012
|
8
|
0
|
3
|
1
|
3
|
1
|
4
|
8
|
|
25/3/2012
|
9
|
0
|
2
|
0
|
2
|
2
|
3
|
12
|
|
26/3/2012
|
3
|
3
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
4
|
2
|
|
27/3/2012
|
4
|
2
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
6
|
|
28/3/2012
|
3
|
2
|
0
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
4
|
3
|
|
29/3/2012
|
6
|
0
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
3
|
3
|
|
Totals
|
55
|
11
|
10
|
12
|
12
|
5
|
32
|
60
|
The table above represents my media usage, in hours per day,
for the ten day period between Monday 19 and Thursday 29 March, 2012. This
table was compiled by noting the start and end times for particular activities,
although times have been adjusted to the nearest hour for ease of use. There
were some notable variables during this period, which I will discuss further,
that have affected what I would consider my normal usage but, on reflection, I
suspect that the discrepancies between this unusually busy week of local media
and what I would consider my normal usage probably aren’t so great that the
results would change dramatically.
According to this graph, my most consistent media use
concerns internet browsing and music. My music usage is less than completely
surprising to me, as I usually have music playing whenever I am at my computer,
as well as whenever I’m cooking or cleaning. I also frequently have music
playing as I try to sleep, although the volume is much lower and, as I listen
to a lot of droning heavy metal, ambient instrumental rock, and classical
music, I use the music as a sort of white-noise generator to aid in sleep. As
such, I have not included these musical excursions in my table as I felt that
adding extra hours where I was, for all intents and purposes, asleep would not
accurately represent my real usage and would skew the results in a dramatic
way.
The most concerning, but – if I’m honest – unsurprising,
result is my online media use. Over the course of ten days, I was utilising
Facebook and Twitter for an approximate average of 5.5 hours per day. This does
include external links to other websites found within my Newsfeeds but doesn’t
detract from the revelation that I spend considerably more time in an average
day browsing the internet than I do sleeping. The only gratifying realisation
to come out of this particular statistic is that the time spent on these social
networking sites is rarely done in one sitting and usually is the gross result
of a day’s browsing. On the weekend of 24/25 March, I spent approximately 17
hours using Facebook and Twitter alone, and this is with the added interruption
of an 8-hour block spent in a recording studio. Thanks to my shiny, new Android
phone (a Samsung Galaxy SII, for the tech-savvy amongst you) I was still able
to frequently check my updates and browse during the down-time spent setting up
microphones but for the purposes of this survey I have estimated it as
approximately 1 hour total spent online using my Samsung Android phone (which I
will continue to mention as often as I can in the hope that Samsung will give
me some kind of sponsorship, or at least some free stuff), usually in very
short blocks of only a few minutes at a time. Then, later, when I returned
home, the very first thing I did was open my laptop and log onto Facebook to
see if there was anything new worth reading about. This behaviour is not
uncommon for me, as I have built myself a very diverse and interesting social
network, and it is not unusual for some of the people and organisations in my
Newsfeed to bring breaking news to my attention mere minutes after an event has
occurred. Admittedly, there are also a lot of dirty jokes and angry rants, but
that goes with the territory and it’s easy enough to sift through the junk to
find some brilliantly insightful articles, blogs and news reports.
I have included my perusing of external links found within
Facebook and Twitter as part of the accumulated time spent on those particular
networking sites, but I have included a separate heading for other internet
media use. This represents the period in which I browse other websites without
the aid of Facebook or Twitter links. The sites I most frequently visit, and ultimately
lose hours of my life to, are the news sites for Russia Today (http://rt.com/ ), the New York Times (http:// nytimes.com/ ), the English site for
Al Jazeera news service (http:// aljazeera.com/
), and the comedy/parody websites Cracked (http://
cracked.com/), and The Onion (http:// theonion.com/).
It is also not unusual for me to spend extended periods jumping from link to
link, following arbitrarily chosen topics and related hyperlinks, across the
Wikipedia website (http://en.wikipedia.org).
Sometimes you can find some amazing things by doing that. I followed a series
of links last week and found myself reading about exploding frogs. Fantastic.
There is little to say about my radio usage. It is only
present at all because I don’t have a CD or MP3 player in my car, so I tune to
Triple J as I drive, with the very occasional switch to ABC Classical FM as a
break from the inanity of popular music.
I will speak briefly about my use of television and movies
as a combined result, although I have tabled the results separately for the
sake of disseminating the information properly. The time spent watching movies
and television combined is quite small when compared to some of my other media
use. This is largely because I don’t really watch television very often, and
when I do it is usually to watch either a news report or to catch up on one of
the many television shows I have failed to keep up with over the years. My
television use over the last 10 days was mostly concerned with watching reports
on the state election, or catching up on old episodes of It’s Always Sunny In
Philadelphia. There is no particular pattern to my television usage, as it varies
pretty wildly depending on how much free time I have and how many interesting
things might be on. My movie usage is only slightly more consistent, as I am a
massive nerd and spend time watching – nay, analysing – movies a few nights a
week, although it is often interrupted by more internet use, which is probably
the most interesting revelation of this statistic. What that tells me is that
either my attention span is getting shorter (which there is some scientific
evidence to support), or that movies are getting worse (which there is also
considerable evidence to support).
The results pertaining to my use of newspapers are the only
results to be higher than what I’d estimated. I have not included the time
spent reading free street press, like Brisbane Times, Rave Magazine and Time
Off Magazine. I have only included the time spent reading the newspapers I buy
out of sheer boredom, which usually include weekday editions of the Courier
Mail and The Australian, as well as the occasions where I pick up a copy of the
Sunday Mail. I don’t spend a great deal of time reading these papers, however,
because – as a direct result of the time spent browsing the internet – I have
frequently read considerable amounts of news reports pertaining to the interesting
articles of the day long before I’ve gotten a newspaper in my hands. If this is
typical of people my age or younger, then the alarmist reports about the “death
of print media” are possibly quite accurate, at least on the larger scale.
I have spent less time reading books lately than I normally
would, as I am normally a voracious reader and will often finish a book every
few weeks at least. However, life gets in the way sometimes and, between
reacclimatising myself to responsible study practices, being caught up in the
media frenzy surrounding the state election last week, and the time spent
recording music, I have simply not spent the amount of time reading that I
normally would. I have spent a considerable amount of time at the Queensland
State Library this week, but I have not included required study and research as
part of my media use as I felt it was not representative of the time I
voluntarily spend reading for my own pleasure and amusement.
As mentioned earlier, there were some noteworthy variables
within this period that have, no doubt, affected my results and changed the
final picture of this diary. Most notably, on the weekend of the 25th/26th
of March, there was a Queensland state election and, as such, there was a
greater draw to the world of social networking so as to keep tabs on the
progress of the election, both via official news reports and the anecdotal
reports supplied by the 200+ people on my Facebook Friends list.
The results found within this diary are surprising. A month
ago I entered my estimated media usage for a survey on media use for University
of Queensland School of Journalism students, and it appears my estimates were
considerably lower than my actual usage, although there is some indication that
elements of my media use have changed over the last few weeks as well.
Ultimately, what this diary, and the information we can glean from the results,
is telling me is that I definitely don’t get enough sleep in an average week.
Definitely.
Karl Anderson
S4288383
No comments:
Post a Comment