Assessment One: Media Use Diary

Today’s post is all about Assessment One: Media Use Diary. This assessment required me to record my daily media use over a period of two weeks. Our definition of what counted in ‘media use’ covered everything from reading a book to watching television and going on the computer. Throughout this blog post, I will be analysing the data I recorded and discussing which media I used and produced – when, where, how and why. I will then discuss and explain why I believe I follow this pattern of media use. Comparing my results to other members of the JOUR1111 class, I will determine what this says about my relationship with journalism and communications.

The table above shows a spreadsheet of my complete daily media usage over a period of two weeks (from 8^th August – 15^th August). The time spent using or producing this media, is recorded in minutes. Before explaining my table further, it may help if I explain a little bit about myself.

In February 2011, I moved to Australia for the first time after leaving when I was three weeks old. I spend the last 16 years of my life living in Hong Kong where my family still lives. As I went to an international school, most of my friends went their separate ways after we graduated in 2010. I was the only person in my graduating class to move to Brisbane and thus, I now live very far away from majority of my friends and family. This means that media such as Skype, my phone, Facebook and email are all very vital to me to be able to communicate with the friends and family I don’t get to see as often anymore. 

At first observation we can see that my most commonly used medium to access media, is the computer. Further, Skype and Facebook are my two most popular media. This is purely for communication reasons and both of which get accessed for close to (if not more than) an hour a day. Throughout the 21^st century, the access to social media has expanded at a very rapid pace and has changed the way journalism works and the way we communicate with each other. By observing the class survey, we can see that out of the 118 people who responded to the survey, all of them are connected to a Facebook account – with 96.6% having one account and 3.4% having two accounts.

You can also observe that I do have a Twitter and Blogger account. This however, is because of my enrolment in the JOUR1111 course and had never been activated before my commencement at UQ. As you may also observe, both accounts don’t get used very often as I’m still not very interested in either form of media and find them more to be a task to complete then a form of media that I would actively take part in willingly. By also comparing my results to the class results, we can see that in the case of 2011 JOUR1111 class, most members didn’t have a Twitter or Blogger account before starting this unit.

My second most used medium to access media is my phone. Since my purchase of a internet-enabled smart phone in July, I’d say that my phone usage has increase rapidly over the last two months. This has also meant that I now spend more time on Facebook. The number of calls and texts I make has also increased since February which has in turn increased my overall media usage.

As my phone is the only way I access the radio (seeming I don’t own a car and don’t listen to the radio at home because of iTunes), this also adds to the increased phone usage. The times I listen to the radio are to and from university and work. When looking at the class survey, we can come to an assumed conclusion that, as majority of the unit have an internet-enabled smart phone, then most of us are seeing an increased consumption of social networking media such as Facebook since the introduction of Smart Phones. The changing way in which society is accessing these networks means a change in the way we do journalism (shifting more towards a larger segment of citizen journalism as it’s easier and more acceptable for citizens to produce, spread and consume news), and the way we communicate. 

Through the data I have collected about my own media use and the use of those in JOUR1111, we can observe that there has in fact been a very obvious shift in the mediums society use to consume media. For example; older methods of consuming and producing news (hardcopy news papers, television and radio – produced traditionally by journalist and reporters only) have been over taken by online news and citizen journalism through means such as news websites, Facebook, Blogging and Twitter. This can be seen through the large amounts of time spend on the computer and very little time spend watching television, reading news papers or listening to the radio.

It can be seen in my table above that I have recoded spending some of my time reading hardcopy news papers, regardless of this shift. However, this is only the MX and I only consume this media because its content is free and easily accessible. Often I get the MX for the purpose of their Sudoku and end up just skimming through the news pages. It can also be seen that I don’t often watch television. This is because a. I’ve never really been a big television watcher, which leads to the reasoning for b. I don’t have a television plugged in, in my house. 

In conclusion, if we observe the pie chart below, we can see that both the computer and my phone play a big role in my media consumption as they are the most used. I believe that this says that I deem communication to be a very important part of my life. As a Journalism student though, I’d say that my relationship with journalistic forums such as Twitter, Blogger and using Facebook as a means to produce news, weren’t up to scratch. This is probably something I’ll have to force myself to get used to over time if I ever want to become a successful journalist in the twenty-first century.